as Chairman, brought up the First Report of the Select Committee on Railways and Harbours.

Report and evidence to be printed, and considered on Wednesday.

I move—

seconded.

Agreed to.

I move—

seconded.

Agreed to.

I wish to call attention to the Great Stock Brands Bill, the second reading of which is set down for Wednesday, 11th March. In the First Schedule it is proposed to repeal the whole of Ordinance No. 15 of 1903 (O.F.S.). This Ordinance, I find, deals with the brands of both great and small stock, and as the present Bill purports to deal only with great stock, the contemplated repeal of the whole of the Ordinance in question does not appear to be covered by the title. I am not disposed to rule the item out at this juncture, but I would recommend that when the Bill is in Committee of the Whole House the point to which I have drawn attention should receive consideration.

When this Vote was last before the Committee, the Minister gave, in answer to a question which I put to him, a very interesting account of what he intended and wished to do about the telephone system, particularly in regard to what has been done at Port Elizabeth, where an automatic system has been established. He mentioned, perhaps with pardonable pride, that he was intending to, as he expressed it, “telephonise” the country. I think the Minister made a bad start in his wish to popularise the telephone by taking the opportunity, when a system has been introduced at Port Elizabeth which will cheapen the cost of working—the automatic, which does away with the expenditure of operating—to practically double the charges to the public. I will take the charge for the domestic telephone. The charge is at present £7, and there is an unlimited user of the telephone. The Minister proposed to levy that charge of £7 and give a domestic service of 600 calls free, and after that a charge of l½d. a call. Representations had been made to him from various quarters that this would mean a very considerable increase. The Minister intimated, that as a result of further consideration, he was going to make an initial charge of £3 5s. and take away the free calls and charge for all calls that were made. It sounds like a concession, but, when you come to work it out, it is only changing the incidence. Six hundred calls represent exactly £3 15s., so the result is that the Minister is going to charge at least £7, and all calls will then be l½d. Consequently on a modest computation, the charge will be doubled so far as domestic telephones are concerned, and in many businesses it will be trebled. I say it is a very unfortunate start in the way of “telephonising” the country.

I would suggest to the hon. member that it would be better and more in order to discuss this point on Loan Vote C, page 12. After all, we have only got to deal with increases here. It would be better for the hon. member to wait until we reach Loan Vote C.

I am in your hands, but naturally it seemed when the Minister had made this statement the great thing was to deal with it under this.

It is true the hon. Minister did make that statement, but this does not prevent the hon. member discussing this matter later in the afternoon.

When this Vote was last under discussion, it was suggested from the Opposition benches that the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs should take over entire control of the Air Force. Now, whether the Minister intends to do this or not is, of course, a question for him, but meanwhile I would like the Minister to give the House his assurance that in any future demonstrations by the Air Force, he will make it his business to see that the airmen do not carry live bombs, especially in view of the disastrous circumstances associating with such practices in the past. I was pleased to hear at least one member of the Opposition being sufficiently broad-visioned—

I am afraid the hon. member cannot discuss that point at this stage. The hon. member is discussing a matter affecting the Defence Force. This is the experimental air mail service.

While the discussion was proceeding on the Air Mail Service it was suggested that the Minister should take over the entire control of the Air Force.

The hon. member is entitled to ask a question.

Well, I ask this question: Will the Minister give the House his assurance that live bombs will not be carried? I was pleased that one member of the Opposition was large-hearted enough to congratulate the Minister on the success of the experimental Air Mail Service. It would have been more fitting had the congratulations come from one or other of the “star-turns” on the Opposition side, but they were all strangely silent. I may add that if the last Government had inaugurated so successful a service as that inaugurated by the present Government, the Press would have blazoned the news in banner head lines from one end of the country to the other. The man in the street is, however, very grateful to know that the Government of 1925 has seen fit to use the Air Force for a purpose in striking contrast to that for which it was used by the Government of 1922. I trust the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs will carry on the good work and extend the service to the interior.

I think that the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg (North) (Mr. Strachan) is talking the greatest nonsense in the world when he speaks about the transport of bombs by postal aeroplanes. Everyone knows that the Government will not allow it. The aeroplanes are intended to carry letters and not to transport bombs. I may say—

Order. The hon. member for Pietermaritzburg (North) (Mr. Strachan) asked a question and I did not allow him to make a speech about it. I can thus allow no discussion.

I am sorry that I am stopped. The hon. member was, allowed to say something, but I am immediately prevented from saying a few words. I will leave the matter, but what I want to say is that in the whole country to-day people are pressing for the building of telephone lines, but nothing is done in the matter. Thousands of pounds are spent to organize postal transport, and on the other hand the provision of telephones for the countryside is entirely neglected. I say that it is unnecessary to-day to spend thousands of pounds using the air fleet to carry letters from here to Durban. The boats and fast trains can carry our letters, and in using aeroplanes only a few hours time is saved. Why is the money not used to erect telephone connections in the country side. The country has a right to more conveniences in this respect. I have already been a few years trying to get a telephone in my district. I am not able to get it done, but the hon. Minister of Posts and Telegraphs uses aeroplanes to-day for the transport of letters without the consent of Parliament. I say it is unfair to neglect a thing that ought to be done, for the sake of some few letters that are carried a few hours quicker. I am not able to vote for this. I am sorry that I cannot propose a reduction of the vote otherwise I would do it.

The suggestion was that the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs should take over the aeroplanes for mail purposes. It is perfectly well known that no live bombs are carried for mail purposes. As regards the head-lines, the Minister has had many headlines over this business. It is spectacular I admit, but it is not paying; it is going to cost the country money. There is a thing that will benefit every family in this country, and that is the penny post. I hope this is not going to interfere with the penny post coming in to South Africa. The hon. Minister will do more useful work by giving the people cheap telephones and postal facilities. This air mail service carries the mails only a day or a day and a-half quicker than the fast trains, and it benefits only a certain number of people in Cape Town, Durban, East London and Port Elizabeth.

I am sorry the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg North (Mr. Strachan) gave vent to an ungenerous gibe, because I think the Opposition members and Opposition Press have given him full credit. Probably this has been the most extensive publicity campaign we have seen. I do not say it was overdone; it served a good purpose, I think the hon. member has been ungenerous in jeering at the Opposition. I wish to draw the Minister’s attention to the position of these young airmen in connection with their salaries and wages. I understand they are sent down here at a moment’s notice, to Mossel Bay and elsewhere, getting the increments and emoluments of the ordinary civil servants; and they find it difficult to meet their financial obligations if they have to keep up two homes. The ordinary civil servant is able to make provision in advance. He can let his house, but these young men cannot do that. I would ask the hon. Minister to look into their position and see whether something cannot be done to ease up matters. I am sure the Minister is very sympathetic to these young men, who have done magnificent work and have been risking their lives, and I think there is ground for treating them differently from the ordinary civil service. I hope the Department will look carefully into the actual air lines that are being followed. The papers have given us a thrilling account of the hair-breadth escapes of these airmen in their last successful flight, and I have spoken to some of these men, and they tell me they had a terrible time. I suggest that some measures should be taken to ensure greater safety in the selection of aerodromes and the line of flight, which might go further inland. I commend this to the Minister.

I should like to associate myself with what has been said by the hon. member for Witwatersberg (Lt.-Col. N. J. Pretorius). I think the hon. Minister might divert his attention from the air mail service to some of the other things mentioned by that hon. member. While he is attending to the expeditious delivery of letters between here and Durban, he may be surprised to hear that for the stations north of Worcester there is a worse postal service than was the case when the train ran only as far as Wellington. A letter posted at De Wet, Sandhills or Orchards to-day would reach Cape Town to-morrow after the offices here are closed. The Minister has been doing a good deal to employ white labour, but I do not think he knows how some of these men engaged on telephone maintenance have been employed. We saw in Worcester for a couple of days a gang of fourteen of these men pulling a street roller. You could have engaged for this work a couple of draught animals at 10s. a day to do the same work. These men were not “delivering the goods.” They were being demoralized by such work. You might as well have kept these men going on a treadmill and pay them the wages of 6s. 6d. per day and upwards.

Last September a meeting was held in Capetown at which the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs (Mr. Boydell) used his favourite phrase—“delivering the goods.” He is reported to have said that the Government was to be judged by its deeds and not by its promises. One has still to learn that a new Government is to get in on its deeds. I am not going to join in the paeans of praise of the Minister on his new departure. I think the population of this country is too small and sparse for this kind of energy on the part of the Minister. We know that anyone who wishes to catch the mail from Durban or Johannesburg on a Friday has only to send a telegram, and it, will be despatched by the mail steamer. The Minister has, I think, fallen into bad company, and in fact all the Ministers have run riot with new expenditure, although when they sat on this side they always preached economy; but now in every vote you find some new departure and new expenditure. It is more than six years since the war ceased, and in and out of season I have been asking the Ministers in charge of Posts and Telegraphs to reduce the charges on post-office boxes and telephones. Why have not these been reduced to pre-war prices?

You must deal with that on the general Estimates.

The hon. gentleman opposite might just take a lesson.

Gladly.

I am dealing with new expenditure, and when that is incurred it is right and fit that I should point out how expenditure should be reduced to the pre-war conditions. In Johannesburg before the war we were paying £6 a year for post office boxes.

I cannot allow the hon. gentleman to discuss this matter.

I am still taking a lesson.

The hon. gentleman may discuss that when the General Estimates come on; but at this stage he must confine himself to the Vote: Experimental Air Mail Service, additional amount to be voted £6,000.

Am I to understand that when a new departure has been created by the Minister, on the score of expenditure I am not to point out where money can be saved?

The hon. gentleman may refer incidentally to other points, but may not discuss this matter further now.

I am one of those who think our population is not sufficient to justify the expense of this air-mail service, and I think the Minister is taking an undue risk in starting a service like that with obsolete machines. Is he justified in using machines made in 1916-17, and endangering the lives of our young fellows in these machines? I associate myself with the hon. member for Cape Town (Central) (Mr. Jagger). Is this air-service going to jeopardize our return to the penny post? South Africa is looking to the present Government to fulfil their promise in this connection. I hope the Minister will give us an explanation in this matter. Another promise made by the Government during the elections was that every farmer was to be connected cheaply with the telephone. I hope the Minister will reply to these questions.

I would just like to put the hon. member for Witwatersberg (Lt.-Col. N. J. Pretorius) right. It is unfortunately a bitter necessity because although they have been a long time in Parliament they do not know the difference between loan funds and ordinary expenditure. This is astonishing. Or do they possibly wish to lead the people outside astray? The fact is that we in the Transvaal are thankful that the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs is making such progress with the extension of the telephone. Places that were previously ungetatable are now reached by telephone.

I would like to point out to the hon. member that this vote is not for telephones.

I only just want to make it clear that this expenditure does not at all come out of the loan funds as the hon. members for Witwatersberg (Lt.-Col. N. J. Pretorius) and Umvoti (Mr. Deane) suggest.

I did not speak about loan funds.

What the hon. member did speak about is this: he said that the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs to-day appropriates so much money for air post and our telephones are not erected. If this is so then I must repeat —

I have forbidden the hon. member to enlarge on that.

Thank you. That is all I wanted to say.

I wish to congratulate the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs on the airmail service, but at the same time I think that the expenditure in connection with it is not going to warrant those facilities that are being given to Cape Town and up to Durban. It is reported that some 400 lbs. weight of letters were brought down from Durban and that is inclusive of those going oversea. Assuming, which I believe I am correct in doing, that 30 letters would go to 1 lb., that means 400 lbs. at 5s., which is going to give you a return of £100 all the way from Durban, inclusive, to England. I think the expense is going to be very much more, and going to be a burden to the tax-payer, and I think the hon. gentleman who referred to the farmers’ party lines and also to the insufficient ’phones in the country is quite justified. I am quite certain my constituents would rather see more money spent in that direction than on the air service. I think the gallant airmen deserve congratulations above the Minister, because it shows that if an emergency should occur these men are au fait and will be able to do their duty. I think on the coastal towns it is highly necessary that these airmen should have an opportunity of going through the coast belt where we are so much subject to fogs, and other adverse conditions. Coming back to the telephones, I feel that the expense in connection with this air service is not justified, and if the money were spent in other directions it would be better for the whole country. I am not talking of little extensions, but I do say that the money would be better spent in developing party lines and telephones generally than on the air service.

I think it is necessary for hon. members to express their opinion on this matter because we understand it is a business that is not going to pay, and the hon. Minister of Posts and Telegraphs has said that he intends to go on with it. Public money is being used, and the hon. Minister must tell us what he thinks about it. It is inexplicable to me that the hon. Minister of Posts and Telegraphs should undertake it. He is a person who, when he sat on these benches, always said that the South African Party only worked in the interests of the capitalists and the rich man, but that we did nothing for the workman or the poor man. Now I would like to ask him who is benefited by the air post? We know that only the large towns have an interest in it, and I suppose that it is only in the interests of business people whose post reaches its destination a few hours sooner. Thus the hon. Minister uses public money with a loss to advantage the rich man and not the poor man. This is a big question and a bigger question for the people who conduct the air flights. We know that people who fly must practise, but when the weather is particularly unfavourable, or if it is a dangerous day, then it is not necessary for them to fly on that day, it can be put off till to-morrow. In the case of the postal service it is quite another thing, because they must leave at a certain time on a certain day, and, what is more, they must deliver their mails by a certain hour, thus they risk a tremendous amount to deliver the post up to time and there is a great chance of accidents. And if such a machine comes to grief, what will the cost be? It is going to cost the country a lot and the life of the airman is also in danger, and if he is crippled or loses his life it will cost the country large sums. We should therefore take note of the danger and uncertainty connected with it and cannot pass the matter over in silence. Then I further wish to say that the letters are only carried a few hours quicker than by rail or by sea. And, on the other hand, we see that the countryside is very badly provided with telephone and telegraph connections, and we think that the money could rather be spent for improvements therein than for the postal service. We know also that during the war our postage was doubled, not alone on letters, but also on newspapers, and it has always been said that as soon as circumstances permitted the postage would be reduced. Now one thing is certain, that if the air service works out at a loss then the other conveniences with regard to communications along the countryside will be greatly delayed, and I want to ask the hon. Minister to take into consideration before he goes further with the air service whether it is not better to devote his attention to services which are of benefit to the public generally.

I think the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs is to be congratulated on having taken a very courageous step in experimenting with the air service. I hope he will not be discouraged by any temporary set-backs which are inevitable in such a great development as this, and that the experiment not only will not be abandoned but that it will be extended further afield so soon as initial success warrants. What I cannot understand is the remark which fell from the hon. member for Maritzburg (North) (Mr. Strachan). Why he should have covertly attacked the Minister of Defence in his remarks is strange. In his anxiety to do full justice to his friend the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs he certainly gave the Minister of Defence a “back-hander,” which I know was entirely undeserved, because the co-operation of the Minister of Defence must have been of very great assistance in this matter.

In view of the criticism which has been levelled in respect of this spectacular venture, the air mail service, I take it that the Minister will furnish the House with some information in regard to the economic aspect of the question. I wish to emphasize the remarks made by the hon. member for Umvoti (Mr. Deane). I think that great regard must be had to the lives of the young men employed in this service. Many of us are associated with these young men, we know them well, and we know that they have made very fine young men with good war records. I believe the machines they are now using, which have been sneered at by hon. members opposite as having been given by the British Government, were at the time the very best machines of the type procurable. We know that aeronautics are progressive, and that the machines now used are, in a sense, obsolete. If you use young men on a service of this character, the least you can do is to equip them with the best machines possible. I would like to know from the Minister whether the lives of these young men are insured by the State. They are engaged on a most hazardous and dangerous enterprise, and, seeing that their emoluments are not increased in any respect, I think they are entitled, in the circumstances, to State insurance.

I only want to say a few words about the air post. The Minister has gone outside Parliament and made an experiment with the air postal service.

Speak louder.

Yes, you can listen a bit. The Minister commenced with the air service, and I think that it goes too far that the Minister should take up such an autocratic bearing outside of Parliament. I condemn it most strongly. I do not want to go against the air service as such because our country must progress. But I think that the greatest necessity in the country is not an air postal service. It has been said that we must develop and progress, but I think in this matter we have gone back because necessary things will remain undone on account of this money being spent. It is impractical to act in this way. If the Minister had first shown to us that it was necessary it would have been another matter. I repeat that we must progress, but while we are paying heavy postage, we should first look at those things before we go over to these new steps. I would ask the Minister if the service along the line to Durban is of more importance than a better postal and telephonic communication in the interior. I understood the Government organs praise the thing up to the skies and even say that European countries will follow our example or should follow it. My opinion is that this is altogether wrong, and I do not agree with it.

I would like to deal with the queries which have been put to me by different members. A number of members have said they hoped that this air mail experiment would not mean that they would have to go short in their telephone development, particularly in the country districts. I can assure them that there is no danger in that regard, because all our telephone development comes out of our Loan Vote; it is capital expenditure. When we come to our Loan Vote, it will be found that it includes money for telephone development, and I hope to assure hon. members who have any fears on the subject that we intend this coming year to do more in the way of farm line connections and telephone developments than has ever been done before. During the year which ends on March 31, we have put in no less than 3,000 miles of telephone wire for farm line services, which is three times more than has ever been done in the Union previously.

I must point out to the Minister that telephones cannot be discussed on this vote.

I will be able to deal with all these points when we come to our general estimates, but I wanted, seeing that there were fears on the matter, to put them at rest as quickly as possible and to assure hon. members that we are not going to neglect our farm line services. The hon. member for Umvoti (Mr. Deane) asked why are we using these old machines? He said: “Is it fair to the aviators that we should give them obsolete machines to use at this juncture?” Let me say that these machines which are in use for the air service are the self-same machines which the Defence Force have got and uses daily for their military operations and for their training purposes, and these machines and the flights which are made now from Durban to Cape Town are really just substituting the flights which would be made practically every day round Pretoria and in different parts of the Transvaal. Hon. members who do not live in the north do not seem to realize that these pilots and these machines are daily flying in the Transvaal, daily exercising, and carrying out military manoeuvres, and it occurred to us that it would be quite a good thing if, for three months, we directed their activities on to a civil service from Durban to Cape Town, and proved whether civil aviation is possible in South Africa, and payable. We are not losing sight of the economic aspect and, although this vote shows the expenditure, we do not know yet what the revenue is going to be, but the value, in my opinion, will be this: If we can prove that it is a sound business proposition to establish air services between Cape Town and Durban, or any other centres, then we shall have done a big thing for South Africa, because it will be at once taken up by some of the world’s leading aviation companies, who will bring their own up-to-date machines here, who will employ our flying men in this country, and who will establish workshops and give a great impetus to aviation in this country. Hon. members in this House do not realize that South Africa is behind—and a long way behind—all other countries in this matter of civil aviation, and this experiment, even though it costs a few pounds, will, I hope, if I may use an aphorism, give a “flying start” to civil aviation generally in South Africa. Something required to be done to show whether it was practicable or advisable and companies, private companies, would not do it, and so we thought we would try and give the thing a “flying start,” and show what is possible, and then we will see what propositions are put to us from these various companies who are watching this experiment very closely. Only this morning, a representative of one of the world’s largest flying companies asked me whether we would favourably consider a proposition, and I replied that that was what we were there for. There are three or four companies considering the matter. Whether we can carry the service on we cannot say, but it will have to get a good deal more support than it is receiving at present. In reply to the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (Central) (Col. D. Reitz), I may say that the matter of the pay of the flying men comes under the department of the Minister of Defence. They would have to be paid in any case. They receive their ordinary salary and a subsistence allowance. If that allowance is not sufficient, then probably the Minister of Defence will consider the matter. With regard to the remarks of the hon. member for Maritzburg (North) (Mr. Strachan), I may say on behalf of the Minister of Defence and myself that from the day this Government took office instructions were given that no live bombs were to be carried on any aeroplane engaged on civil work or for demonstration purposes. In the past there had been, unfortunately, several serious accidents arising out of demonstration displays through live bombs being dropped and people being killed.

That was not civil aviation.

When giving military demonstrations during a time of peace, some military machines were sent, and in the course of the demonstrations, unfortunately, several fatalities took place. The first week after the present Government took office the Minister of Defence gave instructions that under no circumstances should live bombs be carried on military and demonstration flights. There has been no accident since, and there can be no accident if that instruction is carried out.

Very cleverly stage-managed.

Will the hon. member try not to act like an animated seidlitz powder? There is no reason for the hon. member for Ermelo (Col.-Cdt. Collins) to get excited. If hon. members opposite will keep quiet I will deal with other matters. Several representations have been made in favour of the return to penny postage. But that means a matter of £400,000 a year. This three months aerial experiment will not in the slightest degree affect our attitude in regard to the penny post. I am always amused when people try to convince me of the necessity of the restoration of penny postage, for no one is more keen than I am to do that. I promised last session that during the recess this matter, and also the reduction of the newspaper post from a half-penny to a farthing, would have the close attention of the Government. The matter has received my close attention and a policy has been decided on, but it is not for me at this juncture to say what this policy is. It will be announced by the Minister of Finance when he delivers his budget speech. It means a sacrifice of a good deal of revenue, and it is for the Minister of Finance to say whether he is prepared to make the sacrifice. The hon. member for Von Brandis (Mr. Nathan) has referred to post boxes and telephones. All these matters have received attention.

I understood the Minister of Defence would give us his views on the employment of military flying officers as pilots of the machines engaged in the aerial mail service. Will the Government treat these men in the same way as men are treated who are employed in commercial flying?

Although the matter does not come under this vote, I will say—in order not to be charged with discourtesy—that according to the best advice, the fact of having a number of pilots engaged in civil aviation does not divest us of the necessity of maintaining military aviation.

When this matter was before the House on the last occasion there was not the note of dissension struck on this side of the House. On the contrary, I think more than one hon. member went out of his way to pay the Minister compliments on this air-mail service. This afternoon the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg (North) (Mr. Strachan) asked a question whether the Minister would give an assurance that no live bombs would be carried by the aeroplanes engaged in this mail service. The hon. member could not have been sincere in putting that question. He knows as every hon. member of this House knows, that no bombs are carried whilst this civil aviation scheme is being carried out. His objective was to revive this very disagreeable insinuation.

I am very sorry I cannot allow discussion on that.

May I point out that the Minister has been allowed to answer this question. I waited until he was allowed because I felt the Minister would have reproved even one of his own supporters for raising this matter. I think this was introduced at a very inopportune time.

I cannot allow discussion on the unfortunate accident at Kuruman.

I imagined that the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs, when referring to aviation incidents in which there has been loss of life, would have taken the opportunity to withdraw a statement which he himself made about the hon. member for Standerton (Gen. Smuts). The Minister said that it was due to the right hon. member’s callous disregard of life that lives had been lost.

The hon. member is now bringing in election stories. I cannot allow this discussion to go on.

With great respect and deference to your ruling I am referring to the remarks the Minister made this afternoon. I only wish to say when the hon. member stood up to whitewash the Minister’s little feet of clay, he was treading on very dangerous ground because he must have known that the Minister was most blameworthy.

I have already said I am not going to allow discussion on that point at all. No reference was made to the right hon. member for Standerton (Gen. Smuts). There was a question put and an answer given but I cannot allow discussion.

May I put a question to the Minister?

You may put a question.

Does not the Minister think this is a fitting opportunity, in view of the fact that the aviator Lieut. Joubert was acquitted by a jury of his fellow-countrymen (a verdict the judge agreed with), to withdraw a most painful insinuation published by him about the right hon. member for Standerton?

The hon. member appears to be attempting to circumvent my ruling. I cannot allow that.

I am most obsequiously sitting down to listen to your ruling.

Might I, under the rules of this House, ask the Minister if he will give an assurance that these machines for which he is asking a vote of £6,000 will under no circumstances carry bombs, and further, if by any unfortunate circumstances they should carry a bomb and an accident takes place, whether he will take steps to see that the Prime Minister is not deliberately accused of having bombs there for that purpose?

I think it is only fair to myself to say that I have never accused the late Prime Minister more than this. That is, I said that when we took office we gave instructions that no live bombs were to be carried on these military machines when they went out for demonstration purposes. I said at one time that if the late Prime Minister after the first fatality had taken place, had given a similar instruction, we should not have had the second fatality.

Is that what you said in the letter?

That is what I said in the letter and nothing more and nothing less. I said it was a callous disregard of human life not to give those instructions that under no circumstances live bombs should be carried. I said it was the duty of the right hon. member for Standerton (Gen. Smuts) to see that after the first fatality, bombs should not be carried on military machines when they went on demonstration flights where large crowds of people were assembled. There has been no fatality since this Government took office and I hope there never will be.

I cannot understand what that has to do with the vote under discussion.

Ask your own side.

I was present when the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg (North) (Mr. Strachan) asked his question, and since then no statement was made blaming the late Prime Minister. Therefore I cannot see how the Minister’s statement is pertinent to the discussion. The Minister said this is an experiment for three months only. When did it start, and when is it to end?

It started on March the 2nd.

So this is going on to June 2nd? The Minister said that the object of the experiment was, not so much that this Government intends embarking on carrying mails, but to induce companies from other parts of the world to come in. Does he think that these companies will come in without considering the economic side at all? I maintain the Minister had no right to embark upon an expenditure of £6,000, and I am totally opposed to it. This is not a laughing matter. Some members think they are at the Tivoli this afternoon. I hope this experiment will be dropped at the earliest moment. In view of the fact that the public are taxed to pay a heavier rent for their post-office boxes and telephones, I think this experiment had better be dropped.

The reason I asked the Minister that particular question was this.

A put up job.

On Thursday last the hon. member for Durban (Berea) (Mr. Henderson) suggested that the Minister should take over the Air Force, and I merely asked, in view of his doing so, whether he would see that engines of death were not carried—

The hon. member is not allowed to proceed on that point.

In reply to the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg (North) (Mr. Strachan). I said nothing of the kind. I did not say anything about the postal department taking over control of the Air Force from the Defence Department. What I said was that I hoped the Minister of Posts would see that the men who risked their lives over a small commercial matter like this would be made as safe as possible and that every care would be taken to keep their machines in proper order, that safe landing places would be provided, and, generally, the risks of accidents would be reduced to a minimum.

There are certain details in which the Minister’s statement is open to correction. I ask whether we shall not be in order in bringing those details to the notice of this House?

I allowed a question to be put and an answer has been given which in my opinion is not very relevant either, but I cannot allow any discussion on the matter.

May I, in reply to the irrelevant answer which was given to the irrelevant question asked by the hon. member for Maritzburg (North), ask the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs whether he was aware that this question was to be asked, and, if so, whether he advised the hon. member not to raise the question; and, if not, whether he himself instigated the question so as to enable him to make the statement which he has just made?

I knew nothing about it.

Some of us have a great respect for the capacity of the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs, and do not wish to think that he has lent himself to anything of this kind. We want to approach this matter in all seriousness. What members on this side have said is that there are other services urgently calling for money, and they have every right to sift the matter and to ask why the money was spent in this particular way. I think there is a good deal in the Minister’s explanation, but I think it was rather like raking in the muck-heap to refer in the manner he did to the unfortunate disaster at Kuruman and to lend colour to the idea that he had previous knowledge of the question asked.

I never did that. I knew nothing about it.

In any case, the Minister in giving his answer took the opportunity of going much more fully into the matter raised than was justified.

Vote put and agreed to.

On Vote 34, “Irrigation,” £3,700.

I want to ask the Minister in charge of irrigation in regard to this reconnaissance survey on the Kromellenboog scheme. I believe that the hon. member for Christiana (Mr. Moll) has stated that if this scheme was carried out the town of Bloemhof would be submerged 20 feet. I would suggest that irrigation, which ought to have a portfolio of its own, should be more fairly dealt with in future. At present it is a sort of step-child, and it has been incongruously tacked on to Justice. The Minister of Justice is at present too busy showing mercy to Johannesburg illicit liquor dealers to attend to irrigation.

I must point out to the hon. member that on this vote there are only two items—“Reconnaissance Surveys” and “Posts and Telegraphs.”

I submit that these surveys are a very important feature, because on them depends the entire irrigation future of the country, and it surely cannot be right to tack irrigation on to an incongruous department.

I am sorry. The hon. member is discussing a certain policy advocating a change.

I am discussing the reconnaissance surveys.

I am sorry, I cannot allow this discussion.

I will await a subsequent opportunity of raising the question.

Will the hon. Minister give us some information in regard to these reconnaissance surveys, because we are asked to vote £6,000 or £7,000, and those who take an interest in irrigation would be very much interested to learn how far these surveys have gone, and the reasons why this extra sum of money is required?

I am not prepared to state how far the reconnaissance surveys have gone, but I can give an explanation as to why this money is required, which I suppose is the only thing relevant. In 1923-’24 the amount estimated was £15,000, which was reduced on the request of the Treasury to £12,000. We have been able to save £2,000, but not the whole £3,000. Certain reconnaissance surveys are being made in connection with the Vaal River, but it is impossible to give information as to what towns or parts of towns will be submerged by this scheme. The whole matter can be discussed on the General Estimates, and I doubt whether any assistance can be given at this stage. That explains why this provision of £1,000 has been made. In regard to telegraphs and telephones, when the estimates were framed by the Department of Posts and Telegraphs the expenditure on the meteorological department was overlooked, and the actual expenditure incurred was £7,000. That is a book-entry for work done by the Post Office.

I asked the Minister how far these Vaal River surveys have gone. I noticed it was not impossible for the hon. member for Christiana to make a statement.

Ask him for it.

Ministers are more and more tending to be discourteous, and the hon. Minister of Justice is one of the chief offenders. I would ask the hon. Minister to remember that we live in a democratic country, and not in Mexico, though I am beginning to doubt it when I look at the autocratic nature of the Bills before the House. We are going to insist on being treated with civility, seeing that we represent half the population and three-quarters of the brains. I would like the hon. Minister to tell us, calmly, if he knows how far these surveys of the Kromellenboog scheme have gone. It is a matter of national importance. It is going to be the biggest irrigation scheme in South Africa if it goes on. I believe the survey has been going on for 14 months, so that I should think by now the Minister should know something about it, though I quite understand that as Minister of Justice he has practically no time to devote to irrigation; but he may be able to give us a little information on the subject.

The question that the hon. member asked is a very fair one. It is well within the knowledge of members on both sides of the House that the question of damming the river at Kromellenboog has formed the subject of a number of deputations. I think it was only eighteen months ago that people from the Kimberley district approached the Government upon the question, pointing out the necessity of hurrying on this survey, as the scheme would provide a great deal of employment by means of placing 100,000 acres under irrigation. I should be glad if the Minister would tell us how far that survey has extended. I believe a good deal has been done in that direction. The Minister will soon find out that this matter interests a very large number of people in this country, equally with the question of raising the barrage to get water in the Rhenoster Valley, and the feasibility of getting a large amount of ground under irrigation there. I have always felt that the expense of such a scheme would be enormous. What I should like to get from the Minister is whether the reconnaissance survey has shown the practicability of the scheme.

Most of the land in the Harts River in the south has been surveyed, but the northern part has still to be surveyed and the storage basin. We expect that to be completed by the end of the next financial year.

Vote agreed to.

On Vote 36, “Labour,” £28,000.

I think that from many points of view, this is perhaps the most important vote in these estimates. I think the time has come when the Minister should make a statement as to the position of the unemployment question. He is asking for an additional £74,000, making a total of £447,000.

Not all on the Revenue Vote.

That is true. I should like to know how this money has been spent, and the number of men who are being relieved.

I should like to add my plea to that of the hon. member for a more detailed account as to how these amounts were arrived at, and how they are being expended. I do not think it is realized to what huge sums we are being committed on account of unemployment. It is costing us practically two-and-a-half millions per annum. For example, municipalities have advanced loans for £149,000; drought advances amount to £500,000; salaries, £125,000, and so on. Locust destruction has also been the means of relieving unemployment. At Hartebeestpoort Dam several farms have been handed over to the Minister of Labour. Then there is forestry, and white labour on the railways, and most of the land settlement activities—these are all part and parcel of unemployment relief measures, so that there is a total expenditure of about two-and-a-half million pounds on unemployment. If this amount is satisfactorily expended, I do not think we on this side of the House will complain; but we want to know more about it. I know that the Minister of Labour is very sincerely desirous of alleviating this running sore, and I think that in addition to giving us a detailed account, he should give the House and the country a clear idea as to his policy in this matter. Up to now the Minister has been somewhat academic; he has been given to theorizing without coming down to earth, and I think this House and the country would like him to come down to facts, and give us a plain statement. I would like to point out, in conclusion, that this is not a party matter.

I certainly did not anticipate making a full and varied statement, but I think I have got the whole matter sufficiently in my mind to outline the proportions of the problem. I respond to the hon. members’ invitation to introduce nothing polemical into this matter. I do not think relief expenditure and locusts and drought relief can be looked upon as unemployment expenditure. It is one of my principal preoccupations to prevent anything that might, could or would cause unemployment to be loaded on to my Department. Broadly what we are trying to do is twofold, or rather three or fourfold. First of all to get relief works on to some more economical basis. I wish to say to the hon. gentleman who has just spoken and others who are going to enter this discussion on a non-party spirit that I in what I may have to say as to the system I invented, am not throwing any bricks about. We have got to feel our way. Take the £100,000 on Loan Vote, the way this relief work in the province is approached is that they undertake certain road works. We advanced the money and we further subsidized per day each man on the basis of 2s. 6d. or whatever the sum might be, in addition to what they put aside, that is in addition to what a kaffir would earn. In the case of the municipalities something the same was done. A municipality institutes work for say five or six hundred men. They say we will charge the Vote with the ordinary pay of a kaffir. A municipality like Johannesburg said “we also vote a certain additional sum based on 2s. 6d. a day and the Government pays another 2s. 6d. The effect of that in the administration of that labour is quite obviously unsound because the persons immediately concerned with the administration of that labour, so long as they get work of a similar amount to that of a kaffir’s; feel there is no particular responsibility laid upon them to get more. It is unsound in its basis. I am not going to inform the House that I have been able to get away from it. You have to depend on local authorities taking the initiative in that way.

You can stop this contribution to the municipality.

Then you have the whole of the people in that place howling because of the distress.

We went through that phase.

We are trying to induce local authorities to deal with these works on this sort of plan Say you have a large piece of work, say a sewage scheme involving 200,000 or 300,000 cubic yards say of earth work. Let them call for open tenders for one-eighth of the work using any labour you like. Call that the (A) tender. Let them call for tenders on a (B) basis using Europeans on a minimum wage of so much corresponding to what, let us say, the men get now. I would be willing to make up half the difference between (A) and (B). When they have nearly finished the eighth or whatever it may be let them call for new tenders for the next portion on the (B) basis only. You will find that the contractors’ wits will be brought to bear. You will have the men trained because the person in charge of that work has to see that the work is intelligently administered, and gradually, as the result of experience some time ago at another place shows, the (B) prices will gradually approximate to the (A). It was similar on the railway works. As soon as we made it quite clear that this is no longer a relief expedient, but a fixed policy, every engineer and everybody administering that labour tried to get the best out of it. That is the line I want the municipalities and local authorities to go on. May I just in passing say, that while you have settled one problem in this direction another immediately arises. In these relief works carried on as they are you have able-bodied men, and some more or less decrepit, and sometimes men over 70 years of age, working cheek by jowl and there is no classification. My scheme will automatically produce a classification, but the decrepit will be on your hands. But that is not so much a matter of relief work as of poor relief and that, let me say, when you come to the rural unemployment, is a puzzling problem. But we have at present nothing like old age pensions, and we have got to get this relief work on to a business basis, if we are going to get your money economically expended, and if we are to produce any improvement in the men actually engaged in that work. It is not much use for a man to be on relief works for eight to ten months and get on to a stroke where he shows no improvement in character or application and so on. That is what I am trying to do. I do not say I have been successful, but I think I am beginning to see a bit of inclination to respond on the part of municipal authorities. I am dealing only with the main effects. I am going to make two great claims. I think it is an advance. We are endeavouring in dealing with the poor white problem to introduce some classification. On the Hartebeestepoort works which we inherited the principle on relief works of the Government subsidizing these men and their families according to size and the Irrigation Department only paying 3s. a day for their services prevailed. I think it cost the Government a good deal of money. I think from the experience we have now of the expense of these works it would have been better if you had said, let the men be employed at a minimum wage on which they can support themselves; let the irrigation engineers by contract or otherwise use them on a piece-work basis and deal with the derelicts and distress on another basis.

What do you call piecework?

By employing contractors and laying down that you shall use Europeans and not pay less than a minimum wage, because in that way you get what is wanting in this country. Sometimes the poor work done is all attributed to the lack of a working capacity among the men (I think wrongly). What we want is the application of the brains of the men using labour to use it in the most economical way and by enlisting the rivalry and emulation of contractors, I think a great deal might be done in that way, and, as in the Railways, by the engineers themselves taking trouble by dividing the men into butty gangs, when the men have a chance of earning more than the minimum. We found at Hartebeestepoort a large collection of persons a certain percentage of whom are unfortunately people who are not able to do a fair day’s work.

Unemployable?

I would not say that, but a large proportion are physically incapable. We have been trying to reduce that number, but the Hartebeestepoort works are coming to an end. Six months ago I was told there would be no more employment for men after the end of last year. This gave me a “skrik” because it is difficult to get rid of a large number of men, but we had to face the matter. After consideration we decided we were going to deal with the white labourers— I hate the expression “poor white”; let us say rural unemployment—in a way in which classification would be possible. You must have some sorting station where they can be sent, tried and tested, and the ones who really mean business passed on, the ones who don’t mean business taught to mean business, and when you come to the really “won’t works” (but given a little bit of hope there are a very small percentage of these), but for the incorrigible “won’t work” we must establish a compulsory labour colony. I have a Bill prepared on that subject, but I do not want to make the first start. I prefer to go about the whole matter by holding out a little bunch of carrots first. If you once instil hope you will find the number who won’t work is very small. We have got Hartebeestepoort coming to an end. The Lands Department have handed over to me three farms on the west bank of the River Losperfontein and two others, which I propose to use as a training farm and a sorting station. The men will be put there with their families. They will be sent out to work every day under direction. It is nearly all irrigable land. There will always be work to do and the fact to inspire hope into them will be the progress of the tenant farms scheme which I have been carrying on, or we will place them on land settlements as probationary lessees. One knows these irrigation works are often a disappointment in the number of persons and the scale upon which operations can be conducted. My last reports are that a good deal more of this land allotted to me will be usable than was indicated by the pessimistic reports brought in at first, and I hope to have continually at work 400 to 500 men.

At Hartebeestpoort?

On this training farm scheme. They are there working under observation. I know the criticism will be made that it will not pay. I do not expect it to pay. But it will not be 20s. in the £ expenditure as our relief work is now. Their produce will bring back a few shillings of the 20s. expended. In the meantime we shall pass them on to forestry and from that as tenant farmers, or as probationary learners on agricultural settlements. With regard to the tenant farmers’ scheme, I found on taking office that about 50 men had been settled. I took the matter up and we rather elaborated the scheme, and I wish to pay the fullest acknowledgment to the hearty offers of assistance we have received from many members of the agricultural population. We advance—either to the farmers or to the tenant—sufficient money to buy the necessary farming implements and stock to enable the tenant to carry on. The maximum individual advance is £150. but in many cases the tenants have a few animals of their own, and in other cases the farmer does not require all the assistance, so that the average loan is under £100 apiece. The total amount advanced, according to the latest return, was £31,000. Something over 500 tenant farmers have now been settled—all on small holdings. You cannot lay down conditions with great rigidity, and as the farmer owns the land you have to humour his views. I would prefer to make the advances to the tenant farmers only, for then they would take two-thirds of the produce, whereas under the other arrangement the land-owner gets half of the produce. There have been one or two complaints regarding odds and ends, but the report I have received is distinctly encouraging; considering the newness of the scheme it is almost miraculous how few blunders have been made, while the spirit of the settlers and the tenant farmers is good. The scheme will require continuous watching and inspecting. I am prepared to hear criticism, I do not expect to hit the bull’s-eye the first time. Two gentlemen called on me three months ago. The first told me that the scheme was a good one, but that the amount of the advance was not nearly large enough. In less than an hour the second gentleman called, and said that the only defect was that the sum of £150 was much too high; which encourages me to believe that we are not far wrong in the figure we have fixed. One of the advantages of the scheme is that in going to the farmers and asking for their co-operation in taking men from forestry and railway works we are able to tell the farmers that we are sending them real hard-working men who will become satisfactory tenant farmers. We want a training farm in order to be able to classify the men and not deal with them as one job lot, and thus let every man bear the odium of the defects which someone occasionally notices; we want to deal with every man on his merits, and we want to encourage those who wish to get on—as most of them do—by dint of persuasion of all sorts, and when that fails we have to be hard-hearted to the men who don’t want to work. My experience has always been that it is a gross libel on the rural unemployed to say that in the bulk they will not work. Give them encouragement and a ray of hope and they will respond, just as everyone else will. The hon. member who asked that he should be told exactly how the money has been spent will find that information in the Auditor-General’s report 18 months hence. I may mention that we now do not subsidize any railway work. We paid about £20,000 a year for tentage to the railway department; this is now stopped. Altogether, including the municipalities and Namaqualand and places where distress is very great, we have subsidized 5,500 Europeans; their dependents number 17,000. You cannot take up the attitude that you are not going to do anything in cases like the distress in the North-West. The House would not have desired the Government to turn a deaf ear to the demands for relief in the cases of real acute penury and physical distress. If you are going to afford relief it is better to do so by giving work than by dishing out foodstuffs. We shall publish in the “Industries Journal” reports on what we are doing. In addition to this we have, since we came into office, been able to extend very considerably the employment of Europeans and of men requiring a civilized standard of life. The railways are employing 4,000 more of this type of man and the postal and telegraph department three or four hundred more. I get encouraging reports as to the economy as the result of giving employment to our own people.

You will have to introduce a tenants’ rights bill. Otherwise some of the men who are farming on the same system will be driven off the land before they get a fair opportunity of reaping the crops which they have sown. At present there is absolutely no security for tenant farming on the halves system. I think my hon. friend should be extremely careful about Namaqualand. I have got a report from a gentleman who came down from there quite recently. He stated that the post-office authorities required thirty men for telephone construction work at 6s. to 7s. 6d. per day. The notice was kept up for a week, and when the official came to commence operations he found that out of the whole district only two men wanted to work.

Were there any relief works going on in the district?

No, the extension from Klaver to Kokenaap is much further south. I might mention one fact which is symptomatic of the state of affairs there. The agent for Ford’s motor cars at Calvinia sold thirteen in the month of December.

But not to those fellows.

It shows that there is a little cash about, in any case. I notice that my hon. friend is stopping the contribution to the Johannesburg municipality. I saw it stated so in the papers.

You don’t believe what you see in the papers?

But is the statement correct?

I can tell my hon. friend (Mr. Jagger) that I think very few of the relief workers at Calvinia were purchasers of these motor cars; I should think none of them. It is not possible to stop these relief works until we have satisfactory rains up there. I am not going to stop my subsidies and put a stop to these works just yet, and throw a whole lot of men into a state of actual starvation. We are doing our best to make these relief works not a mere passing thing, but something from which men pass on to better things.

I would like to ask the Minister of Labour whether, when people apply to his department for work, careful investigation is made where the person worked last and why he left his service. I will say why I ask the question. I know of a case where two white persons worked with a farmer for a long time, and then they came and asked for more money. The farmer said he could not do it, he said that they had been working for him for years and had always been satisfied. They replied that they would go away, because they could get more money at the Government works than from him. I understand that it often happens in the Western Province that employees working for farmers come to Cape Town because they allege that they get more money at the Government relief works. Therefore, I think it is of great consequence that before such persons are engaged, proper enquiry should be made where he last worked and why he left his work, and then the department must not be satisfied with that, but also investigate whether the man’s statement is true. Then the hon. Minister spoke about forced labour colonies. I did not quite understand him and I would like to know if, during the present session, a Bill for the establishment of forced labour colonies will be introduced. I understand from him that the Bill has been drafted.

I wish to bring to the Minister’s notice a point on which I asked him a question the other day in connection with free medical treatment of relief workers. His reply was that on most of the rural relief works medical services are rendered by district surgeons to the workers free of charge, but no arrangement for free medical attendance has been made for town relief workers. I would like the Minister to explain why a difference is made and why the urban relief workers are not provided for in the same way as the rural relief workers. I have a letter from a medical practitioner in Ladybrand, in which he states that he has outstanding accounts of a considerable amount amongst these people, and that he was amazed to find that some of them were only getting 5s. a day. The practitioner adds that in many of these cases, when a doctor was called, the minimum cost was 7s. 6d. for medical attendance and medicine. That means one and a half days’ work for these poor people, and the result is that they either do not have a doctor and die or, otherwise, they have to pay the equivalent of one and a half days’ work. I would be glad if the Minister would make a statement on this matter and see whether it is possible to allow these people to go to the local magistrate and obtain an order for free medical treatment.

The Minister of Labour has spoken about the large increase of employment of whites on the railways. I would like to ask him whether that does not mean a corresponding displacement of a large number who are not Europeans, and, if so, what special attention has been given to that aspect of the problem. Does not his solution of the problem of white unemployment mean creating the problem of increased unemployment amongst coloured and natives. The Minister has spoken a good deal about the poor whites and the people from the rural areas, and I am sure the House listened with great interest and with a good deal of approval to the very excellent scheme which has been attempted to get people who come from the land back to the land. But one of the greatest problems that we have to deal with is that of the class of man who has never been accustomed to manual labour in his life, especially people of the clerk and shop type. People of that class are amongst the people who provide the most distressing cases of poverty. They are not people who can be dealt with on relief works. I would like to ask the Minister if any special effort has been made to deal with that kind of person.

I think the House listened with very great attention to what the Minister of Labour had to say. He spoke with very great caution and very great reserve, and, I should say, he spoke with a certain amount of disillusionment, very natural disillusionment. I am sure the hon. member from the Opposition benches never realized what a complicated and heartbreaking task it was to tackle. What chiefly impressed me was the fact, and the very agreeable fact, that the Minister is practically carrying on unchanged the policy that he found when he took over.

No.

Yes, I think so. The Minister told us that he is carrying on the piecework on the railways and forestry, which he found when he took over, and he is carrying out the tenant-farmer system, which he admits that he found when he took over. He admits that he has taken over our probationary system at Hartebeestpoort. I am not trying to make political capital out of this, but I wish to express satisfaction that the Minister has been sufficiently well advised to use the foundation which he found. I remember saying two years ago that piecework, to my mind, was the only solution. I am glad to hear the Minister stress that and say that he, too, finds that introducing piecework amongst the rural unemployed is proving very satisfactory. He also told us that the tenant-farmers’ and all the other schemes that we started are working very satisfactorily. I must say I had rather hoped that the Minister would be able to go further and go more to the root of the subject, because in essence most of these things are still pauper relief and are still doles. I do not blame the Minister, but I had hoped that he would have gone more to the crux of the matter. Putting 4,000 more daily-paid labourers on the railway may be very useful, but it is not taking them out of the category of poor whites. The year before last I told the House what the Minister has repeated, that, given the right conditions, the right management, the rural unemployed—I do not like the term “poor whites”—can work, if put on piecework. Beyond the fact that the Minister of Labour has adopted, and extended —very usefully extended—the schemes which he found in being when he took over, I feel disappointed that he has not been able to do more. I know he has given the matter years of thought, and I had hoped he would have arrived at something more tangible than carrying on relief works. I had hoped he would have arrived at some scheme, not of giving men a temporary dole, but something which would have put them on the upward path. As soon as the Minister got away from the schemes bequeathed to him by the previous Government he rather went into the blue, and was somewhat vague, as to what he proposed doing beyond Hartebeestpoort, the railway work, and the forests. Beyond that he has not touched the fringe of the problem. I had hoped he would drop that “carrot” simile—it is not a very complimentary one. For his own sake I hope he will drop it. It sounds as though he looks on the rural population as a lot of donkeys. He was hard on me some time ago when I gave a certain description of the rural unemployed, but I certainly never gave them that description. Then as to Hartebeestpoort, how is he singling out the applicants? Are there probationers at Hartebeestpoort yet?

You mean probationary lessees?

Yes.

No; that does not come under this vote.

But I thought he said he had received three farms from the Minister of Lands?

No, these are daily-wage men.

But I understood the idea was to put men on these farms, train them to work, and when they were qualified, promote them to a plot at Hartebeestpoort. That was the gist of the system. If that is not so, I hope the Minister will explain his system. While we are willing to give him every assistance, I think we would like to know what the scheme is. After all, there is about £2,000,000 of the taxpayers’ money in Hartebeestpoort. I hope the Minister will tell us how many men there are at Hartebeestpoort and how he singles them out. Last year we had a very long battle in this House on this particular question of calling for applicants, and at last the Minister of Lands agreed that the present system should be adhered to and that no man would be given land unless the existing regulations had been adhered to. Would the Minister say whether he is actually calling for applicants in the “Gazette”? If not, he is not carrying out the spirit of our Crown land laws.

You are chasing the wrong hare.

I am merely asking for information because we are all very interested in this scheme at Hartebeestpoort. I will sit down if the Minister will explain.

I will first answer the hon. member for Colesberg (Mr. G. A. Louw). Of course, cases will occur where men prefer to go to some relief works rather than work for a farmer. We have a case of that nature at Van Rynsdorp, but they were special circumstances. Broadly speaking, we do not take men on to relief works if they have been offered reasonable employment elsewhere. In reply to the hon. member for Lady-brand (Mr. Swart), as far as I know the information I gave was correct. We do accept responsibility in the country districts. In the towns the question has never arisen. The men at Johannesburg get 7s. 6d. a day, but the question has never yet arisen in the towns. With regard to the hon. member who has just spoken, as I said at the opening, I am not going to use this debate as a sparring match. I could say a good deal in regard to what the hon. member said, but, I do not wish to go into that now, because although these things may start in a certain way the continuance may not be precisely the same as the commencement. I think if we are talking about Hartebeestpoort, the system hon. members opposite inaugurated was a very costly one. No doubt on some other occasion we shall be in a mood for the sparring match, but I do not want to go into that now. As to the point the hon. member was on last, he was chasing the wrong hard. It is not a question of alienating that land to anybody. This is simply Government land which is being used for training. Not one of the workers will get a square inch of that land. It is simply a training farm from which these probationers will be drafted on to farms. Have I made that clear?

No.

The persons who come on to those farms are employed by us at a daily wage.

What assurance is given to these men that when they are qualified they will receive a plot of land, either at Hartebeestpoort or on other Government land?

We wish to make it quite clear to them we are engaged on the continual work of trying to get men settled out of these works. This is a little bit of jam—if I may say so—this is an inducement. When one is talking of these matters it is a habit I have got into of using that simile which the hon. member took exception to, but I am sure there is no derogation to anybody. There is no question of our allotting any of this land. How I shall get them is by drafting them from those who apply for work at the labour offices in the various parts of the country. I believe myself that that attempt which we shall pursue of classification, of trying to deal with this question in a systematic way—I do not recognize its parentage as being that of the hon. member over there—I believe, and I earnestly hope this attempt will result in reclamation and vocational training of a large number of men who become social outcasts.

What are you paying them?

I think it is 33s. a week. In reply to the hon. member for Rondebosch (Mr. Close), as far as non-European labour is concerned, practically the coloured men, we are doing our best and with some success to restore to them a good many areas of work from which they have been driven in the past.

In what way?

Down at the docks, for instance, we have about 300 more employed than before.

What about the kaffir?

The question of kaffir unemployment is not a pressing one; it is not one that obtrudes itself. Indeed, as hon. members know, the demand for more cheap labour is insistent.

I think the Minister has forgotten to answer my question. My question was: has he any of these people at Hartebeestpoort yet, and if so is each man getting a cottage, as the Minister of Lands promised? And, further, what relation does the area of these three farms bear to the whole area at Hartebeestpoort? Looking at the old Hansard reports, it would appear that Hartebeestpoort was intended for something totally different from what the Minister is turning it into. From what the Minister says it is merely an agricultural training-school, like Elsenburg. I want to be clear on the subject. The original Hartebeestpoort Bill—it was a non-party measure— laid it down that Hartebeestpoort was to be used for putting small tenant-farmers on the land. That is why I want to know what area those three farms cover in proportion to the whole. The Minister says there is no obligation to give these people ground. He says the Government are simply paying them 30s. a week and training them, and then sending them out into the void. Is that in accordance with the Hartebeestpoort Act?

I am afraid I cannot give the exact figures now. Our Hartebeestpoort ground comprises something like 6,000 morgen. Of that about 3,000 morgen are cultivated.

Under irrigation?

As the hon. member knows there is a good deal of kopje land, and land unsuitable for cultivation, but about 3,000 morgen will be available for intensive cultivation. I am trying to give the hon. member information. It is not an agricultural farm in the sense that Elsenburg is. It is totally different. It is a place at which we have men under observation who will pass on the other things.

To agricultural pursuits?

Yes; it is not into the void, and I want to acknowledge the debt we are under to the agricultural community for giving us assistance in this matter. Of course, it will take a great deal of care in working this thing out, but we hope we shall be able to settle a very large number of these people and restore them to a right position amongst the citizens of this country. For a place like that, it is necessary to have irrigation, because you want to keep these men employed all the year round. I wish I could get three or four more similar stations, also under irrigation, where there will be intensive cultivation. There are obvious disadvantages in a farm in the dry-land aea, because during a considerable period of the year it would be difficult to keep these men continuously employed, as we desire.

I asked how many there are now?

I think at Hartebeestpoort there were 1,600. We have reduced the number to 900.

I am asking how many are being trained as agriculturists and how they are being housed?

I don’t think that at present there are any there. We have only got the plans in working order. I am putting up little hutments of asbestos sheeting, and I think I shall have 200 in a couple of months. I wish the country and these men in particular to understand that there is no abiding place for any of them there. It is simply a channel through which they will go, and the hut inhabited by a man to-day will be occupied shortly by another.

There is no abiding place to-day on this earth for anybody.

Except for the right hon. member in an almost permanent seat in Opposition.

I should like to know what steps have been taken to find out where these people who go to Hartebeestpoort come from, and whether anything is done to ascertain whether their statements are correct. If they know that their statements are being followed up, they will be more careful. I understood the Minister to say that if he is not successful with his policy of dangling a bundle of carrots, he will have to introduce a Bill providing for forced labour. I should like to know when that Bill is going to be introduced. I notice that two men were sent to Bloemfontein with a view to getting settlers for his tenement scheme. I should like to know how many families have been placed with farmers in the Free State as the result of their labours.

I do not know what we are coming to when hon. members want the Minister to make further enquiries as to the characters, antecedents, and where last working, of people applying for relief work. I think that anybody, even if starving, could not be expected to do more than they are doing when they ask for relief under existing conditions.

I am astonished at the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (Central) (Col. D. Reitz). At Van Rynsdorp there are many poor people who work hard at the relief works and at the relief works at Olifants River there are also many who work just as hard. If those people work hard and show that they can be good farmers should not our Government give them a chance to come back on the land? His Government would never do it, and he ought to be ashamed that they would not meet these people. Now he is inquisitive and asks if there will be houses for the probationary workers at Hartebeestpoort. I would like to tell him that our people live in straw huts if they can find work, but the hon. member for Port Eilzabeth (Central) now wants to know how things are going at Hartebeestpoort. His Government only wasted money there, but now that this Government is making a success of it, he suddenly becomes inquisitive. He should rather be ashamed of himself. He was surprised that so much land was comprehended under the work. The poor people of the country have the right to curse him in that he would give them no chance, and now that our Government are on the Government benches, and are occupied in finding a solution of this problem, he wants to put all kinds of obstacles in the way. We should give the poor people an opportunity of coming on to the land, and what better chance can they get than when we use them there as day labourers, so that they can prove that they can work. We can then take care that the sluggard does not come there. Is he going to object to this, and say that we must keep the capable man also away from the land? No, it becomes the hon. member to say nothing about the matter.

I am very sorry the hon. member for Namaqualand (Mr. Mostert) has seen fit to take advantage of a discussion, which up to this point had been conducted on non-party lines, to make a very gross personal attack on me personally. I do not propose to follow him in this, and members on this side of the House will not follow his example. We appreciate the fact that the Minister has done his best to keep this discussion up to a high standard, and I hope he will administer fitting reproof to the hon. member. We could say a good deal in reply to the Minister, but we feel this is a matter of such far-reaching importance, that we want to keep the discussion at a high level. The hon. member seems to accuse me of undue inquisitiveness, but we are all interested in this experiment—the biggest social experiment that is going on to-day—which is costing a lot of money and will cost a lot more; I presume it will cost a quarter of a million per annum. We are not going to grudge the money if it is usefully spent, and the Minister has shown no disposition to withhold information on the subject. The Minister proposes to deal with 3,000 acres at Hartebeestpoort, and I think the entire scheme, so far as the Government scheme is concerned, is about 10,000 morgen under irrigation; so the hon. Minister of Labour is taking nearly one-third of the scheme for this agricultural school. It is a very big bite out of the scheme, but if the experiment is going to be a success we will not complain. What I wish to know is whether the Minister has any idea as to what he is going to do with these men when they have graduated from this agricultural school. Does he propose to give them a rudimentary education and then wash his hands of them? Or has he worked out a scheme for dealing with these men when once the inspector says that A, B and C have qualified, and they must vacate these areas? Will they get land? It seems to me that it would merely aggravate the position if you give these men an agricultural education, teach them to use implements and instil into them ambitions, and then push them into the void. That would be almost worse than useless. I would ask what the Minister proposes to do with them.

I would like to give some information to the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (Central) (Col. D. Reitz) and I hope that I can satisfy him. He knows the locality well, and I just want to make it clear to him that the three farms lie on the left bank of the Crocodile River.

What are the names of the farms?

I cannot give them at the moment. In any case, it is that portion of the ground enclosed by the Swartkoppies. A few thousand morgen of this land can be ploughed, but a large portion must first be prepared before it will be arable. The land and the ground of this scheme is being given over to the Department of Labour for this purpose, but the rights to the ground my department will retain. On the other portion of the ground there are probationary lessees, but the three farms are quite apart on the left side of the river. Everybody knows that rights to the ground—and this the hon. member knows—can only be given under the Land Settlement Act, We advertise for these probationary lessees and the Committee of Control considers the application. The people to whom the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (Central) (Col. D. Reitz) refers are those who were at the canal works and people who have no work. They are put on the ground and the department of labour pays their wages. This is what it actually comes to. If there are people down who show that they will make good agriculturists and they are recommended by the board of the committee of control, it will certainly help them to be taken on as probationary lessees. With this recommendation they will also be taken into consideration for being placed with farmers. The farmers would rather have experienced people. Others will perhaps be taken up in the department of railways or by other undertakings, but the hon. member can be certain of it that the station for selecting individuals will only exist as long as it serves to select the people, and the people get no rights to the land. The position is that the ground remains the property of the Government, and later, when perhaps the system is no longer necessary, then the ground will be used for other purposes, perhaps for the probationary lessees. Thus the hon. member need not be afraid that the ground will secretly be issued to the people. This is the whole scheme.

I have listened with interest to the statement of the hon. Minister of Lands, but must take it that the selecting station is not too well known to the Ministers of Lands and Public Works because they do not know the names of the farms. It is, however, natural that the scheme of the hon. Minister of Labour will be permanent. He told us that about 2,000 or 3,000 morgen were intended for the sorting of the workers, it is therefore clear that the rest of the ground will be given out to probationary lessees, but on what, then, will the price of ground for provisional lessees be based? The price is surely based on the whole scheme.

Those are difficulties that the Land Board must solve.

No, they are difficulties for the taxpayer. The ground is paid for with the money of the taxpayer and is the price to probationary lessees now to be based on the total price of the ground, including the 3,000 morgen?

There will be no extra cost, it will be the same as elsewhere.

But the Government did not get the farm for nothing. This whole piece of land has been bought with the money of the taxpayer, and the idea was that the land board, or whatever body controls this land, should after inquiry fix what the price would be per morgen, e.g., £60 or £80 per morgen. Now I do not know if it is the intention to calculate the price of the ground after deduction of the portion which is used for the selecting of the workers. The Minister surely knows that as the matter now stands the ground which was given out under the Crown Land Settlement Acts will be much too high in price.

I just want to say that as the position is now, it is in any case necessary to fix the price independently of the price the ground cost. Reduction of the full price will have to take place or otherwise no one will be able to buy the ground. This is one of the schemes which has been submitted to the irrigation commission to ascertain what the ground is really worth. No one will be able to pay the price that it actually costs.

One admires the almost unquenchable thirst for information exhibited by the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (Central) (Col. D. Reitz). He made one statement which I am sure, if accepted at its face value, would have caused some dismay, namely, that the Government have taken over the proposals of the late Government in this unemployment matter. He asked what is being done to go to the root of the trouble. He admits that nothing has been done to attack this problem at its root, which is an admission on his part that, so far as the late Government is concerned, they have done nothing to try to solve the problem. They have gone in for a policy of palliation. I think the present Government has gone very much further than that, and one particular item they are dealing with is the system introduced last session, of settling probationers who are paid wages on state lands, which is better than anything done by the previous Government, and will go further to solve the problem than anything that has been done, and I hope that the system will not only be extended, but perpetuated, for there are thousands of people who may be very anxious to work on the land, but who would never be able to succeed as farmers, or otherwise, because they start with a limited financial capacity, and they are faced in all directions by various sorts of competition which makes it impossible for them to make farming on their own a success; but I think the point which this House, and the country, must realize, with some concern, is the point made by the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (Central) (Col. D. Reitz) that, so far, nothing very definite has been done to go to the root of the problem of unemployment. I think it is right that this House and this country, generally, should realize that the problem of unemployment (however unpalatable it may be) is insoluble so long as we have our present economic conditions in this country. It is unnecessary to go into details, but the very fact that you have the spectacle of older countries—like the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany and others, where they have tackled this question and have gone on the lines of the late Government, and applied palliatives—that are still faced with the problem, must prove to us conclusively—

I have allowed a great deal of latitude, but the hon. member must confine himself to the subject.

That is why I have stated that I did not propose to deal with that question. I am showing that we will have to go much further than at present if we want to see the tens of thousands in the towns, and the large number of people in the rural areas, employed.

I suppose there is one country where they have gone the whole hog to get to the root of unemployment; a country which, I imagine, is well known to my hon. friend— Russia. They tried the experiment, and eighteen millions of people have died, and there is starvation there and millions out of work at the present time. They have gone to the root of the matter, and not adopted palliatives, but I hope that we will not have Russian methods applied here. What has the Minister to say about unemployment in the towns? The whole of the scheme, as I understand it, and the major portion of the Minister’s speech, was applied to rural unemployment and, so far as I can see, it is on good lines, but there is a lot of unemployment in the towns. As mentioned by the hon. member for Rondebosch (Mr. Close), there is a class in the town who cannot use the pick and shovel. I suppose, to some extent, it is the same on the land. Perhaps he will give us some information with regard to that side of the problem.

I should like to supplement what has been said by the hon. member for Cape Town (Central) (Mr. Jagger). The last budget made provision for an expenditure of £300,000. The Minister now comes and asks for £25,000 more, and another £3,000 for salaries, wages and allowances, some part of which I presume may be due to the supervision to which he has already alluded. We have heard incidentally of the efforts being made by other departments, with more or less success, to solve this question of unemployment by the giving of employment to what is now called “civilized labour” in Government departments. Something is being done in the railway, and £120,000 has been put down, I think, to provide in the current year for the extra cost of carrying out this policy. The Minister of Posts and Telegraphs has dealt with Namaqualand and the Minister of Agriculture has also done a certain amount, and a considerable amount of people have been employed in dealing with locusts. The employment of some of these men, I am afraid, may be worse than the locusts, but it does appear that a considerable number of men have been employed, mostly casually, in dealing with locusts. No doubt other departments have done what they could, and we have on the estimates, to which we are presently coming, £49,000 additional, on Loan Funds, also to be used in connection with unemployment.

Which vote?

On Loan Vote unemployment advances £49,000 additional. All that is evidence that there is a very large amount of money spent, and about to be spent, by the different departments, and I should like some much clearer information than we have at present as to the effect of the expenditure of this money; the effect it has had up to the present, and the effect it is expected to have in the coming year; because, after all, I suppose when all this large expenditure is contemplated, the heads of the different departments have come together and compared notes and formed some estimate of the amount of unemployment that exists, and the relief to be given, and I think there should have been some allocation to the different departments, as, if this is not done, we are in danger of spending money here by the Department of Posts and Telegraphs, the Department of Agriculture and so forth, and, as one Minister said, you are driven into spending more and there is no limit. If we could only get some system, some real exchange of information between the departments—I do not say it has not taken place; I think it should have taken place—but one gathers in the course of this discussion that there is not much indication of it. In regard to the scale of wages, reference was made to the employment of people by the Post and Telegraph Department at, I think, 6s. 6d. From the returns I have seen the Minister of Agriculture employed men to deal with the locusts at a minimum wage of 10s. up to 22s. 6d. I agree that you cannot have a hard and fast scale, because conditions vary and, in some cases, housing accommodation has to be supplied I should like to know whether there is co-ordinated action, and if any estimate has been formed of the number of people who are to be provided for.

I have listened to the Minister’s outline of his policy with great interest, but I should like to ask him particularly with regard to those people who have been thrown out of work under the Industrial Conciliation Act. Last December an award was given in a dispute in the building trades in the Cape Peninsula, and the result of this award has been to throw out of employment a very large number of semi-skilled workers. Roughly, the award was that a carpenter had to earn 2s. 9d. an hour, whereas an unskilled labourer could earn 7½d. an hour. There was a very large number of men who were not, I agree, first-class skilled men, but who, prior to the award, had been earning from 1s. to 1s. 6d. an hour. These men have been thrown out of employment. Now they have either to remain out of work or to take 7½d. an hour, so instead of doing these men good the arbitration has done them serious harm. I know the views of the Minister of Labour on this matter, but I would like to know what steps he is taking in order to rehabilitate these men. Is he going to help them to become fully skilled? They are now squeezed into the unskilled class, and this is a very great hardship on these men, who by their own good work have raised themselves from the unskilled to the semi-skilled category. I do hope that they will have some assistance from the Minister in some shape or form. I suggest that something should be done to enable these men to qualify as fully skilled tradesmen, because as it is now, instead of the Conciliation Act being used for the good of the worker, it has done a very great deal of harm to a hard-working and good class of man.

This is the first I have heard of the matter referred to by the hon. member for Newlands (Mr. Stuttaford) and I would like to know that the conditions to which he refers actually exist. My information is that one or two men may have been thrown out of employment, but certainly not large numbers. The hon. member has been grossly misled in this respect. It is unfair to ask the Minister to declare a policy on any question on the bald statement of an hon. member without any proof whatever that matters are as stated. We know what the effect of the award has been, and it has not been to displace large numbers of semi-skilled men.

I desire some further information with regard to the tenant farmer scheme which the Minister outlined in the “Farmer’s Weekly.”

Did I outline it?

It was outlined for the Minister, I understand. It corresponded with what the Minister told the South African Agricultural Union Congress at Durban, when I was present. I was so much impressed with the Minister’s statement that I offered to take a tenant farmer on the terms outlined, but from that day to this I have not had the courtesy of a reply from the Minister or the department. The man on whose behalf I applied and who was out of work, was told that he was not eligible because he had not been through the relief works. He was particularly qualified to make good on the land, and had testimonials both from English and Dutch-speaking farmers as to his honesty and ability; at one time he managed a farm for Sir Abe Bailey in the Colesberg district, and as the result of unemployment he was in dire distress. The scheme put forward by the Minister states that the landowner must undertake to retain a tenant farmer for not less than six years; if that is so, a farmer is expected to incur a liability which may prove very troublesome. Provision is made for welfare officers who are supposed to visit the farmers who take tenant farmers. I should like to know how many of these welfare officers are employed, how many tenant farmers have been placed on the land, and how many have the right to buy the land which they are working?

I see that the hon. member for South Peninsula (Sir Drummond Chaplin) is not in his place, so I need not bother to answer him, beyond saying that the Government is acting on its policy of doing as much work as we can on a civilized labour basis. As to the remarks of the hon. member for Cape Town (Central) (Mr. Jagger) as to the black-coated unemployed, that is a problem that at present baffles me. I can only say that we are doing everything we can, and in one centre (Durban) we received considerable encouragement in trying to get men engaged in big businesses to employ European youngsters.

The unemployed in the towns are not all black-coated.

I should be jolly sorry myself if I had to make enough to keep body and soul together out of shovelling earthworks at 1s. 6d. a yard, whereas a skilful navvy would do well at the same work at 1s. a yard. With regard to the question of the hon. member for Newlands (Mr. Stuttaford). the Conciliation Board’s award which, in accordance with the Conciliation Act, I made a rule in the Peninsula, simply indicated that the standard rate of wages should be paid in the trade. It was the unanimous wish both of the organized employers and the organized employees.

Not the whole of them, by any manner of means.

The hon. member is off his mark a bit. It was the unanimous wish of the Conciliation Board, upon which the organized employers and organized employees were represented.

But the Conciliation Board did not represent all the employers by a long, long way.

It was the only organized body of employers under the Act. I do not think we need enter into a long discussion on that matter. It is a matter of policy on which I thought both sides of the House were agreed. With regard to the hon. member for Illovo (Mr. Marwick), I am afraid that I am without exact information as to the precise height to which the tobacco crops have grown, without exact information as to the precise state in which each plough is, and without precise information on a number of these points. I may tell the hon. member that when we were in Opposition, we were not unaware of the advantage of asking a string of questions in order to keep things going, but I think we did it with a little bit more verve and levelness, perhaps. What useful information can I give the hon. member in regard to settlers who have been settled about three months? I told the committee that I had a report quite recently from a senior official of the Agricultural Department, a head of their Extension Division, whom I asked to look round and to report to me exactly how things were going. He reported to me that, in his opinion, things were going extraordinarily well. Is the hon. member satisfied with that reply? I am keeping continual touch with the matter, I have an official of the Agricultural Department lent to me to go and examine into it, and see how it is going on, and a member of my advisory council, a gentleman well known to the hon. member, at a very early date is also going to make a tour.

How many settlers are there?

About five hundred.

Do you say there are 500 at Hartebeestpoort?

No, five hundred altogether on the tenant-farmers’ schemes. I may tell the hon. member for Newlands (Mr. Stuttaford) that it is our settled policy where we can to establish industrial councils and organizations of that sort, and I am perfectly certain that it is better for the country, generally speaking. I hope the committee will allow this vote to go through.

I am sorry I was not in the House when the Minister began his reply. I understand he said that he was unable to reply to my question on account of my absence?

I gave an answer, more or less.

Perhaps the Minister would not mind indicating, briefly, what his reply was?

I will just again repeat that it is quite impossible to give exact figures, or approximate figures, of the number of persons who are unemployed throughout the country. We have certain figures in our Department which I would be able to give to the hon. member in regard to the applicants for employment, but that, of course, does not represent the whole of the unemployed. It is the settled policy of the Government to see that as much of our work as possible is done by men working under conditions which will support civilized men.

I think it is very unfair on the part of the Minister of Labour to practically repeat the accusation which was levelled at us the other day. He says we are asking questions, “to keep things going.” We know that the other day the Prime Minister, in a very dramatic fashion, appealed to the Gallery, and said that we were obstructing. One of the members of the Gallery accepted that invitation to look into matters.

I am sorry, I cannot allow the hon. member to discuss any previous debate.

I am discussing a statement that we are asking questions “to keep things going.” In regard to that. I want to draw attention to what was said the other day when we were accused of obstructing. The Prime Minister appealed to the Gallery. The Gallery has accepted that challenge.

The hon. member is not allowed to refer to a previous debate on another subject.

All right, I will not make any reference to that. I will just reply to the Minister of Labour. On an occasion when we were accused of obstructing, a member of the Gallery took the trouble to go through Hansard, and he found that, putting aside all irrelevant interjections, and putting aside the questions, the Pact party made 141 speeches to our 111, that is, they made 30 more speeches than we did.

What has that got to do with this Vote?

I am taking exception to the remark of the Minister of Labour.

I am not going to allow the hon. member to refer to a previous debate.

I am not referring to a previous debate; I am referring to the remark of the Minister of Labour.

Order. The hon. member has read a letter in reply to what the Prime Minister has said in a previous debate, and I cannot allow the hon. member to proceed on that point at all.

May I explain? I never mentioned a letter. I am only saying in regard to the accusation that we are wasting the time of the House, what the actual facts are. The actual facts are that there are 45 more columns of Hansard—

I must stop the hon. member on that point.

The point I want to put to the Minister is this: he is, under his policy, spending a very considerable amount of money in making any man who is suitable for agriculture an efficient man for the job. What I want to know is whether the Minister will pursue the same policy with regard to the tradesmen in towns and help those men who are down and out, because of what is called the civilized labour policy of the Government, to go un instead of down? What I would like to know is will the Minister spend the same amount per head in turning the semi-skilled men in the towns into skilled men? I want these men to go up to the ton price instead of being driven down, which is the effect of some of these awards which are to come before the country are likely to have.

There is one point on which the Minister did not give the information asked for. I have one thing in view, that is the re-establishment of men on the land. I yield to no one in my wish to see the men who have been displaced rehabilitated. It is not fair to suggest that my enquiries have been for the purpose of keeping the debate going. I want to know: is it one of the conditions laid down by the Minister that a farmer who is to take a tenant farmer has to do so for at least six years? If that is one of the conditions, is it not contributing to the comparatively poor response made by the farmers in this matter? It seems to me it would be an obstacle to have to take a man for six years irrespective of his character or suitability. Will the Minister tell us if the experiment has been satisfactory?

The Minister has omitted to tell us how this item is come by. We have £325,000 for unemployment of which £25,000 is an increase on the Minister’s own estimates. So far he has given no idea how the amount is arrived at and what he is to do with it. It seems to me he should give us a detailed account. The Minister has spoken in a general way and a remarkably vague way as to the Hartebeestepoorte scheme. Why, neither he nor the Minister of Lands knows even the names of these three farms, and I understand from the Minister not a single man is on them yet. A considerable slice of this money is to be spent on this very scheme. Surely the Minister should give us a more specified account. The sum is a very large one, though: I agree the new regime is inclined to treat globular sums of money in a lighthearted manner, but we on this side are not. What is the Minister going to do with this? How much is to be allocated to Hartebeestepoorte and how much elsewhere? Surely the Minister must have statistics by now. His staff should know approximately what the unemployed position is. Cannot the Minister give us some idea what the present number of unemployed is?

The Minister refuses to answer a question because the member who has asked it leaves the House, but I would like to know why he does not answer a member who has remained in the House for the sake of getting a reply.

I am sorry. The hon. member knows it was purely an oversight. My recollection is, he asked if I would be careful to get some details in regard to persons who applied at the Labour office.

There was another matter.

Yes, the Compulsory Work Colony Bill. That would come as the last instalment. We have been told by hon. members that we have introduced too many Bills already, and yet the hon. member wants more. If business of the session permits, I hope we shall be able to deal with this matter. I think that answers the question. With regard to details, my instructions are that men who have left employment are not the people we want. We do not want people who have left employment to come on our heads and we are trying to prevent it, but as the hon. member knows it is extraordinarily difficult to judge whether a man is telling you a correct story.

Then there were two men sent to Bloemfontein.

We did not get much response there. I am hoping to send again and get more exact information.

I think farmers are deeply interested in the question of the hon. member for Illovo (Mr. Marwick), and I claim that a reply should be given. I again ask, has the Minister had a good response from the farmers to the appeal to take on these tenant farmers? Has the response been what was expected? Are there more farmers prepared to take such tenant farmers than applications from prospective tenant farmers? Does the stipulation that farmers shall take on these men for six years militate against the success of this scheme? We should also like to know—

I would like to ask the Minister of Labour for some figures about unemployment. What was the total registered in his books as on August 1st and as on the 1st instant respectively, and for the relative figures on the same date in regard to poor white or rural unemployment as he calls it?

Put the question on the paper.

I asked the Minister this afternoon whether he could inform us as to what response he has received from the farmers in the taking of farmer tenants.

I have already answered the question.

I heard that 500 men had been placed as tenant farmers, but I have not heard what response the farmers have made to the scheme. We farmers are exceedingly anxious that this question should be solved, and we will do anything reasonable to assist the Minister and the Government in solving it. If they succeed, no one will pay them a higher tribute than we who sit on this side of the House, for the matter is as close to our hearts as it is to the Minister’s. Unfortunately, in the past, when endeavours have been made to help these people and give them work on farms, there has not been that response on the part of many of them that might have been expected. I would like to know whether this stipulation that farmer tenants should be taken for a period of six years has in any way militated against farmers taking them on their farms. It is a serious matter for a farmer to tie himself up for six years to a man who may turn out to be a slacker or be insubordinate. These men are expected to obey the instructions of the farmer as to the manner in which they carry on their farming operations, but there appears to be no means of real control by the farmer or redress in case of the tenant farmer being unsatisfactory. It is further stipulated that farmers are not “to treat these men as servants.” The farmers want to know if the department will co-operate with them and protect them in case of difficulty. I think I am right in saying that the Minister made it clear that preference would be given to men who have been in Government employ, either on the relief works, forest plantations, or at Hartebeestpoort. There is a vast number of other men, however, who have had bad seasons and have temporarily failed, but who are excellent farmers; they would be far more likely to make good if given another •chance than men who have been employed on Government or other relief works without previous farming experience. Are deserving though impoverished men to be left on their beam ends by Government restricting this assistance to persons who have been on relief works only? To make the experiment a success, it should be extended in the direction I have indicated. I hope the Minister will answer my questions, and not take my speech as being merely an antagonistic criticism. I deplore the spirit of levity which was introduced into this discussion this afternoon by certain of the members on the other side of the House, as the solution of this question is of vital moment to the welfare of South Africa, and deserves only the most serious consideration—

I hope the Minister will acquit me of any desire to make party capital out of this question. I do not. I realize fully how much the Minister has this matter at heart, and a good part of his political life has been spent in furthering white employment. I quarrel with his method. I have disagreed before, and I have stated my views in the House in opposition to the Government I supported. Now, I have listened to the debate for the better part of the afternoon and I must confess I am not clear as to value of the measures taken by the Government. My impression is that the Government is using pills to cure an earthquake. When discussing a matter of this kind it is difficult to differentiate between policy and administration. I feel very seriously that unless we can do something to lift up the submerged masses of our population our civilization in this country is doomed. I feel that the whole of our civilization rests upon this base, the base of this submerged mass which we must lift up.

The hon. member cannot go into the policy of the Government. That was gone into last session. He must confine himself to the estimates of Additional Expenditure up to the end of this month. He must confine himself strictly to the reasons for the increases.

I quite realize this, but it is difficult to say where policy ends and administration begins. The Minister made a long statement this afternoon. He said what the Government were doing, and in discussing his statement I am merely discussing matters of administration.

The statement was made in answer to your question. I cannot allow an answer to a question to be discussed, otherwise there would be no limit to the debate at all.

Well, am I at liberty to discuss the actual matters which the Government have undertaken during the recess?

No. The hon. member must limit his remarks to criticism of the increases.

When the Minister first started out on this question of administration in his department he sought to obtain the advice of the country as to how it should be carried cut. Though we had commissions which had sat on this matter and which recommended the manner in which the question of unemployment should be administered, the Minister wanted new light. The Minister called a conference in Cape Town immediately after the session last year. Here was a subject which admittedly required the most earnest consideration of our best economists. It was a subject which went deep to the roots of our economic life. It requires and has had in the past the serious consideration of men eminently fitted to enquire into the subject. Yet the Minister was not satisfied. How did the Minister commence his task? He summoned to Cape Town a fitter, a carpenter, a blacksmith and all the various representatives of trade unions in the country to advise him on how to grapple with one of the most serious economic problems we have in the country. These people met here in Cape Town, coming from all parts of the Union, and they sat in conference for a few hours to pass two or three resolutions. That was their contribution to the unemployment in this country. I won’t say the Minister was beating the big drum, but it surely does seem very Gilbertian that after so many commissions had sat and so much discussion has taken place, we should have to go to a few trade unions in the country to find out how to deal with this question. It was simply playing with the question. What eventuated? What policy is the Government following? It is subsidizing labour in the municipalities on relief works. I, personally do not think we are going to preserve our civilization in this country by making white men scavengers in the streets of Johannesburg. I do not think the white race is going to be lifted up by putting a white man in competition with the native. I know the Minister of Labour disagrees with me, but I have all the authority on my side. He is flying absolutely in the face of all the recommendations of the unemployment commission that sat a couple of years ago, and I think the country has a right to know which portion of the commission’s recommendation the Minister is following. Is he following the communistic recommendation of the hon. member for Troyeville (Mr. Kentridge), who brought in a minority report or the recommendations which were contained in the majority report of the commission; because there is a wonderful difference between the two recommendations; and if he is going to follow that of the minority report—which one may gather from the legislation introduced seems to be quite likely—I think the country has the right to take very grave notice of the manner in which this matter is being dealt with. Let me point out one of the effects of the Minister’s policy in regard to this displacement of native labour. The majority commission, in their report, stated—

I submit that the action of the Minister in displacing native labour for European labour is doing what the commission warned him not to do. The effect will be to lower the wages paid to Europeans and bring about more unemployment. The commission goes on to say it is true that Europeans elsewhere—

We should like to know whether the Minister absolutely ignores these remarks and whether he is founding his policy entirely on the minority report of this commission. There is an aspect of this question which I feel very strongly. Has the Minister ever considered that the people he is placing on the land he is placing in a worse position than the coloured labourer in our towns.

The hon. member must confine himself to the Vote or I must ask him to discontinue his speech. I have told him very clearly both at the beginning of the debate and a few minutes ago that you cannot here discuss the policy of the Government at this stage.

I realize the limits of this debate, but on a matter of such importance I think the Minister should give us a better idea of how this policy is going to work out than he has done. I realize the difficulties that face the Minister and it is my desire to do all I can to help him, and in making the remarks I do I feel convinced that if we proceed on these lines we shall only bring disaster on the people we are trying to help. They lack those essential qualities which are necessary to win out on the land, and, lacking those qualities, we leave them to face every misfortune such as drought, locusts, hail-stones and everything else against which every man on the land has to struggle. We are placing them in a worse position than the coloured workers in the factory. I feel that these people lack the necessary self-reliance and character generally possessed by settlers who finally win out.

I must ask the hon. member to discontinue his speech in consequence of irrelevance.

The hon. Minister has told us this afternoon that he is going to put 400 or 500 people on Hartebeestpoort to learn farming. I should like to know if he is going to fix an eight hour day for them and how they will learn to farm.

The hon. member for Newlands (Mr. Stuttaford) raised the question of the wage fixed by the Conciliation Board. The hon. member for Germiston (Mr. G. Brown) said it had not led to any people being out of work. I think I know where he got the information. During the dinner hour, I took the opportunity to get in touch with a builder. He is not a big builder, and he assures me that there are a considerable number of men out of work, both skilled and unskilled, on account of that fixing of wages. Building has increased in price by at least 10 per cent. and, as regards repairs, by at least 20 per cent. That is his statement, and I quite believe it, and consequently building is falling off. This policy of the Minister’s is undoubtedly going to lead to more unemployment. If he really understood the business he could not help seeing that it is going to put up costs. I have had information from two sources from another man, and this one and they both agree that the cost of building is up 10 per cent. as regards building a house; consequently as people have only a certain amount of money, if the building costs go up, some will fall out as the money will not go round and the same applies to repairs. If men can get them done reasonably, they will get them done, but if cost is dear, they will make it stand over. My hon. friend must see that it is unjust. Why put men out of work when they are quite prepared to work? But, of course, they cannot be taken on at 2s. 9d. and 2s. 4d. I consider this a grave injustice; a policy of this kind. What right has anybody to take work from a man who is willing to work?

I think it was the late Government that passed the Act.

Never mind, we are learning from experience, and it is a grave injustice that men willing to work should go about the streets without work and cannot be given work because they must be paid no less than 2s. 9d. and 2s. 4d. according to the law. The master knows he cannot afford to pay that rate. I say it is a grave injustice and is the cause of unemployment.

I was waiting to hear the Minister of Labour reply to my question as to whether he was prepared to spend the same amount of money in making semi-skilled tradesmen efficient as in making semi-skilled agriculturists efficient. I should like a clear and distinct answer on that, and also as to whether, in his policy, there is a colour bar or not. I confirm what the hon. member for Cape Town (Central) (Mr. Jagger) has said as regards the rise in the price of building. The hon. Minister can refer to the Minister on his right and he will be informed that the Housing Board have been obliged to raise the maximum loan, which leaves no doubt that the price of building went up on account of the award. I do not want to discuss that point, because the Minister can steam-roller his policy through the House, but I should like to have an answer as to whether they are trying to turn semi-skilled men into skilled.

In past years we have heard a great deal of the crying need for a remedy for unemployment, and we anticipated that a true remedy would have been brought before this House. The only remedy, as far as I can see, that has been made by the Minister of Labour was an appeal to farmers to take men on their lands as tenant farmers. That is a very fair suggestion, but I think I am correct in saying that there is a clause which lays down that they are not to be treated as servants. That clause makes me feel that the hon. Minister of Labour has not learned the ABC of the unemployed problem, because it is from the country that men drift into the towns. Some have owned land, but they are inefficient, or some have had bad luck or bad seasons, but the majority of them have failed, however, because they have not learned to be servants before they were masters. I feel that is the crux of the whole position, and that they must learn to be servants before they can become masters. They have been lacking in thrift, in diligence, in habits of regular work, in discipline and so have failed in life. This clause ponders to that fetish in this country, that Jack is as good as his master. I regard this clause as a vital mistake, and that if these men are put back on the land on these terms, the majority will only drift back into the old conditions. There are a number of them who are not fit for anything except a labour colony, and I should like to see something done in that direction.

The hon. member is discussing the general policy of the Government. I have informed him that he must confine himself to the items in the vote—“salaries, wages and allowances” and “unemployment expenditure and advances.” Of course, if he confines himself to these increases, he is entitled to proceed, but he is not entitled to enter into the general policy of the Government. He can do that when the main estimates come on.

I will reserve my remarks to the budget debate.

I asked the hon. Minister a question and cannot get a reply thereto. I am not annoyed with the hon. Minister, but I should like the hon. Minister of Lands, or one of the other Ministers, to deal with the question. How must these people be taught to work, and has it been decided that they should only work eight hours? It is very necessary that we should know how these people should be turned into farmers. We want to see how the state will teach them how to work. I will not detain the House further.

I should like to ask whether I am to understand that the hon. Minister will not give the same facilities to us—

You have had a very good innings.

I have hardly occupied the time of this House for a quarter of an hour for a week. Surely I am entitled to an answer to my questions.

I should be glad to know whether the hon. Minister is going to answer my question about the figures of unemployment. Surely, we are entitled to elementary courtesy from Ministers. They are not sitting here as autocrats, though they seem to be mistaking the position. The Minister of Labour, backed up by some extremely impertinent observations by the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs, has refused to answer my question, and I should like to know whether he is going to give me that information.

What information?

Some time ago, I asked whether you were in a position to give the figures of unemployment as on August 1st.

I told you I had not got them here.

Excuse me, I did not get that answer. I do not propose to submit to that kind of answer, and I shall go on asking that question till I get an answer if I can. Ministers sit here as Ministers of the Crown, and not as party members to try and score points. Members are entitled to try and get these questions answered. I do not know what members mistake for excitement. We shall insist on plain answers to plain questions, and if we do not get them we shall let the country know that the Ministers will not answer questions either because they are personally discourteous or incompetent, or because they do not wish to let the country know the answer to our questions.

You have tried to waste time.

I ask your ruling, Mr. Chairman, as to whether a question properly put by a member is a waste of time.

I never said that.

That does not go down with me. I asked the hon. Minister of Labour a perfectly fair question. The hon. Minister of Posts and Telegraphs, who has been rude several times to-day, made this remark. I ask whether he is in order in saying that a question properly put is put for the purpose of wasting time.

I never said that. I said we declined to waste time.

That is an amendment of what you said just now, but it is not very much better. I again ask your ruling, Mr. Chairman, as to whether it is permissible for a Minister to suggest that a perfectly fair question was a waste of time.

If the hon. Minister had suggested there was wilful obstruction I would have called him to order, but he did not do so.

Before you give your ruling, Mr. Chairman, may I call the attention of members sitting opposite to the fact that members from these Treasury benches, hon. and right hon. members opposite, formerly continually accused us of obstruction when we sat on the cross-benches.

That is quite a different thing. I am entitled to an answer from the Minister of Labour, and if he does not propose to give that answer I—

I just wish to make a remark or two. The question the hon. member asked I already answered, by saying that I had not got the information in the House and that if he will put the question on the paper I will get it for him.

Nonsense. We never heard anything of the sort.

May I remind hon. members of the saying, that an old poacher does not make a bad gamekeeper. We never obstructed when in opposition, but perhaps there was a tendency to carry on discussion to a point hardly compatible with the transaction of public business, and one recognizes the same tactics. In this case futile questions are being asked in order to take up time and try to show the country that the Government cannot get through its business.

It may be that the old poacher has not lost his habits, but that is no reason for suggesting others are subject to the same habits. The question I ask was simply: Are you in a position to tell the House what the amount of unemployment was?

I told you I have not got the figures here.

After a long interval you tell us that. I submit to the judgment of the House whether that was a futile question. We are asked to vote an extra £25,000. Surely we are entitled to know whether the policy for which we voted £300,000 at the beginning of the year has or has not been successful, and whether the Minister has reduced the total figures of unemployment or not? I fancy that the hon. Minister knows that his answer would be the same sort of bombshell amongst the Minister’s friends and supporters as that referred to by the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg (North) (Mr. Strachan). He may not be able to give the information—he would have saved a lot of time if he had said so—but to describe that as a futile question is really not worthy of the Minister.

The Minister of Labour has a new department constituted at a great deal of expense and he comes to this House and makes open confession of the fact that he does not even know the number of unemployed. The whole purpose of the department is not only to know the number of unemployed, but to absorb the unemployed and make proper provision for them, and yet the Minister comes here in the most airy manner and dismisses this question as a futile question which is beneath his notice. I remember when the Minister of Labour sat on the Opposition benches, how he used to storm at the insolence of office of former Ministers, of those “puppets who sat in office” and ignored his questions. I see the Minister of Labour is leaving the House. It has been well said “from labour to refreshment,” for that is doubtless where the Minister is going ! The whole of his treatment of the tenant-farmer question has lacked ordinary common sense. The condition that he is imposing that the tenant farmer shall be taken on for six years is destructive of the usefulness of the scheme. It will simply neutralize the whole benefit of your effort if you go round among the farmers asking them to take tenant farmers on a scheme such as this, binding them to take on for six years people whom they know nothing about and who must belong, under the conditions of this scheme, to the poor relief or afforestation works; and, therefore, limiting the choice to people who may not be a success. Another point I would put to the Minister is whether, in accordance with his own conditions under this scheme, there is any prospect of permanency in this settlement. The welfare officer is charged with the duty of ascertaining whether the owner of the land is prepared to sell the land to the tenant farmer. I have been unable to get information from the Minister on this point. I think this debate, as far as the information from the Minister’s side is concerned, has been a particularly barren one. I take the strongest exception to the manner in which the Minister has repeatedly absented himself from the House. I think it would be as well if the Minister reconsidered his position and resolved to amend his attitude towards the House in future.

Being a new member of the House, I, unfortunately, have not had the advantage of the instruction of the Minister in obstruction. I do not intend to start practising it, but I still want to know if he will be good enough to answer my question. The hon. member for Cape Town (Central) (Mr. Jagger) has told him this evening that there are many men out of employment owing to this award, which the Minister has confirmed. It is a vital matter to these men to know whether they are going to be helped upwards or driven downwards. I agree that the majority of these men are coloured, but I take it that the coloured workers of this country also will come under the purview of the Minister of Labour.

Who created the unemployment?

The Labour party more particularly, who were supported by the rest of the Pact. I do not want to get excited about this matter, but I want a perfectly plain answer to a perfectly plain question.

As the hon. member (Mr. Stuttaford) is a new member, I may just reply that this is a matter which has not been brought before me as one of urgency. My information from the department is different from what the hon. member for Cape Town (Central) (Mr. Jagger) has, and, as far as I am concerned, I will give the matter consideration.

I would like to ask the Minister of Labour who is the Superintendent looking after the men at Hartebeestpoort. Is he a man who can tell the difference between a worker and a non-worker?

Do you want a job?

Oh, no, I am not looking for a job; I am not one of the “pals.” I hope the Minister understands that I am not applying for the job. But there are a good few men who would be more capable than some of the men whom I saw working on a certain work which I will not mention here. There were 26 men on the job, four were working and 22 were looking on. I would ask the Minister whether you are sifting this business to the bottom by having a man who does work and who knows what work is. I want to see the good men handed on, so that they may make progress in their work. With regard to the conditions in the tenant farmer schemes, I may say that, speaking as a farmer, if I were asked to take on a man, white or coloured, for six years, I would cut it out. I would not risk taking on any man for six years. It is an absolutely silly proposition. You do not know what the man is until you have tried him. I agree with the Minister that a man must be a workman first and a farmer afterwards and that the farmer must take these men on the land, and teach them to work, but you must have a worker to sift them out and to clear out those who do not want to work and encourage those who do want to work.

I am sorry that I cannot get an answer from the hon. Minister, namely, to hear from him whether the people who will be taught to farm are only to work eight hours per day. But as the Minister will not give me the answer—I suppose the Afrikander Ministers are frightened of their brothers there on the cross benches—I would like to say a few words in that connection. My opinion is that it is right to teach these people to work as the Minister is now doing but if he only lets the people work eight hours as is now being done in the towns then he will never make farmers of them. I do not take it amiss of him that he will not answer my question because I never waste the time of the House. I want, however, to see these people taken away from the towns and put again on to the country side as we all want. The movement is however no longer from the towns to the country because in the towns the people are released from all responsibility at five in the afternoon, they then do not want any more responsibility and this is not the case with the farmer. I want to warn the Minister that if he adopts this principle of the eight hour day that no good farmers will be produced. The Minister of Lands has said here that these people must not expect to get ground for certain where they are working or elsewhere. This is not right. A man who is doing his best must be given a chance. It is not encouraging if we say to them you must work for three years but you cannot get ground there. There is another matter that I want to raise in connection with the advances given to farmers or to workers. The Minister has said that we must no longer call these people “bywoners.” I can give him the assurance that these people are not ashamed of the appellation “bywoner” because with us in the Transvaal the “bywoners “are treated well. These people should be placed with farmers that can farm and not with people who are themselves incapable. My experience is, and I can speak from experience, that we want people who are able and willing to keep an eye on these people and to help them along. If he thus does not place them with farmers who are competent then these people will not learn much.

I think this is the vote on which you intimated it would be more appropriate for me to raise the question of the charges on telephones at Port Elizabeth. I would like to state again what I said this afternoon so that the Minister may reply. The other evening the Minister stated it was his wish to telephonize the whole country, to make the telephones popular. With that I am in entire agreement with him. But the point I was making was that it seemed a bad start in the attempt to popularize the telephones to begin by doubling the charges. The position at Port Elizabeth is that the charge for domestic telephones is £7, and there is an unlimited user without any extra charges whatever. It was intimated that from the installation of the automatic telephones, the charge would be £7, and there would be free calls up to 600 and, after that, there would be a charge of an extra l½d. for each call. The Minister told us the other night that in response to representations made from hospitals, charitable institutions, and the public, he would make the first charge £3 5s., and then a charge for every call which was made. That amounts to precisely the same thing. The result is that the charge to be incurred, it is reckoned, in business premises, will in many cases amount to three times the present charge. In other cases it will amount to at least twice the present charge. There is no question of surrendering revenue, because this is a new and extra charge. There are other centres, I know, in which this charge applies, but the fact remains that the Minister who has intimated his desire to telephonize the whole country starts off in his campaign of popularizing the telephone by practically doubling the charges in Port Elizabeth. It seems to me a very bad start.

I would like to ask the Minister in connection with the installation of automatic telephones in Pietermaritzburg, when he expects that installation will be complete? Also, in view of the position in Durban, which is practically giving up extending automatic telephones, whether the Minister considers the installation of automatic telephones is in the interests of telephone users? I gathered from a circular which has been issued that the cost of telephones is to be £9 for business premises with 900 free calls, and £6 for private premises with 600 free calls.

£7.

Yes, £7. I should say a business house with one telephone would have about forty calls a day as a fair number. After all, that is only one every quarter of an hour. That works out at £78 7s. 6d. a year as against £12 10s., the present charge. As to private telephones, on the basis of £7 with 10 calls a day, it works out at something like £25 a year, as against the £7 10s. to-day. Does the Minister consider these fair charges? In comparison with the telephone system in Durban, which pays, these are extraordinarily high charges to make. I should also like to know what the position is in regard to the redundant clerks, both girls and men, who we were told would be displaced on the installation of these automatic telephones. The Minister said he would find other employment for them; but the girls in the towns, I understand, will have to find employment somewhere else, and if the department finds employment these girls will have to go away from their homes.

As near as we can tell, the automatic exchange at Pietermaritzburg is likely to be working in about three to four months time. The last two speakers have complained that the new telephone charges at Port Elizabeth and Pietermaritzburg are not going to be a decrease on the old charges. But that does not say that the new charges are too high. What it really means is that the rates in the past have been far too low. These two towns have been in a specially favoured position, because the old manual exchanges, both in Port Elizabeth and Maritzburg, did not have any metering arrangements, and could not register the calls. The result was that those two towns have been working as Durban is now working, on what is known as a flat-rate. You pay so much a year and speak as often as you wish to. But other countries have abolished the flat-rate. We have abolished it in South Africa. But Port Elizabeth and Maritzburg have been the last two towns to retain the old flat-rate system. It is only to be expected that when they are brought into line with the rest of the country and made to pay for the calls they have, they should complain. It would be unreasonable if they did not pay the same charges as the rest of the towns. But Port Elizabeth and Pietermaritzburg will not pay any more than Cape Town and Kimberley and Johannesburg. They will not be treated any worse or any better than the rest of the country. When we come to compare the Durban system with our system, all I can say is this: That if we only had one small town to give telephone services for in a highly organized system in a small area, it would not cost anything like as much as it costs the country to run a national telephone service. Would the hon. member apply his argument to a branch railway? The hon. member knows that when we take the railways, we have to take the good with the bad, and take the whole. The same applies to the telephone system. There is no bad in Durban.

Then the argument is that all centres like Durban should adopt the same system?

No, not at all. Take the Cape Peninsula. That extends over twenty miles. Take the Reef. That goes over sixty miles. The position becomes worse when you go right out into the country. No, I have been going most carefully into the question of telephone finance, and I can assure this House that when it is possible to reduce the rates I shall be the first person to wish to see it done.

We shall all be dead.

No, it certainly will be a long time before the hon. member opposite will go. It seems to me a remarkable thing that we, who have only just taken office, are expected to do all sorts of miraculous things that the hon. members opposite could not do in fourteen years. I venture to suggest, at any rate, that the job will be done better and more efficiently by us than it was done by hon. members opposite, and I can say that from the experience I have gained since holding the portfolio I do hold, that had the late Government been carrying on, the telephone and many other services would be sticking in the mud. The hon. member has drawn me a little bit. I did not mean to be drawn, I simply meant to deal with the question. When I was at Port Elizabeth I told the Chamber of Commerce there that we were going into the question of telephone rates. I have not made a reduction on the rates which obtain in other parts of the Union, but I have made the incidence a little easier. I have altered the basis of payment so that the poor man can have an equal chance with the rich man. Then I am making it possible, for a charge of £1 12s. 6d., for a person to get a telephone for six months in Port Elizabeth, and then pay as he uses it. That is something the late Government never did. For £3 5s. a year anybody can have a telephone installed in their home, and I think this will help to popularize the telephone. Whether we will be able to extend this to other centres will depend how much we get out of the Loan Fund to provide the necessary equipment and plant for other places. It would be madness to extend this system to Johannesburg to-day, because it would be impossible to meet the demand for telephonic connections that would follow. We are, however, enabled to make this fresh arrangement at Port Elizabeth because we are putting in new plant there. The next town we shall treat in this way will be Maritzburg, where the position will be similar to what it is at Port Elizabeth, and I hope to popularize the telephones in Maritzburg as they are being popularized in Port Elizabeth. Then we shall extend the new arrangement from town to town as our funds will permit. I am sorry that I cannot put Port Elizabeth on a more favourable position than any other town as regards call fees, but Port Elizabeth has the advantage of coming in on the ground floor. As for redundant employees, I promised last session that in consequence of the installation of automatic telephones at Port Elizabeth, none of the telephone exchange employees would be dismissed, and that employment would be found for them, locally if possible but, if not, in other centres. That promise has been fulfilled—not one of the employees has been dismissed. I was speaking to four of them only the other day, and they said they were very pleased to have the opportunity of coming to Cape Town, which they liked. We shall, as far as possible, do the same at Maritzburg, but some of the employees will have to move to other centres. The hon. member for Maritzburg (South) (Mr. O’Brien) must not forget that the public service extends throughout the country, and it is very often necessary to transfer officials from one part of the Union to another. We shall deal with the redundant employees at Maritzburg as sympathetically and as reasonably as we possibly can, and will not, unless forced to do so, transfer those who do not wish to be transferred.

We feel that although Port Elizabeth and Maritzburg are to be brought nearer into line with Johannesburg, Cape Town and other centres, and that the charges are to be made more nearly uniform, the proper position would have been not to increase the charges in some centres but to decrease the charges in those centres bearing the greater burden. The telephone charges in the Cape Peninsula are much too high. The ordinary householder pays £7 on the installation of the telephone, and at the beginning of each year, but at the end of the third month, he finds that he has used up his free calls, and has to pay l½d. a call for each additional call. That, in the aggregate, amounts to a great sum. The small business man makes an initial payment of £10, but at the end of the second month at the very latest he has used up his free calls. Where people used to pay £10 for telephone calls three or four years ago, they now have to disburse up to £30 or £40, which is too much. Cannot the Minister treat Cape Town and other places in the same way as Port Elizabeth and allow the charges to be paid in instalments with a small initial charge?

If I did I could not meet the demand.

Never mind. Suppose you treat the present subscribers that way? Then in Cape Town if we ring up any place outside the prescribed circle, for example Muizenberg, we have to pay double. The Minister should make the whole municipality one centre for telephonic purposes and not differentiate in the treatment meted out to different towns.

We have heard a great deal about Port Elizabeth, Maritzburg and Cape Town, but I want to ask the Minister what he is doing for the farmers in the Union?

I noticed recently in Natal, with considerable satisfaction, that gangs of white men were engaged laying the telephone cable. This work was previously done by natives, and in view of the crocodile tears being shed by the members of the South African Party with respect to unemployment, I would like to ascertain from the Minister, and it would be interesting information to the House, whether the reports he has received from his officials on the work done by the white men compares favourably with that previously done by the natives, and, further—

Is it economical?

If I may anticipate, I believe it will show that the work has been better done by white than by black labour. Is the Minister prepared somewhat to increase the rate of 6s. per day? I understand that under the last administration these men were paid 5s. a day. Very few were employed, but I understand there are considerably more white men employed to-day under the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs than ever there were formerly. I would therefore like to know, if reports are favourable to the work being done by white men as against natives, whether the Minister will pay a little more than 6s. a day to those men who are giving satisfaction to the department?

I would like to ask the Minister whether a good part of the vote he is asking for now is not perhaps losses on telephones, through certain people not paying up, and also whether he could not, at a later date, give us the consideration (I am speaking now for the country people and the farmers), whether he would not consider allowing them to make a deposit and save their paying every month, sometimes, in smaller places. 5s. running up to £1. Would it not be much easier for the department to take a deposit and let the man know when the deposit has run out, as they do in the Railway Department at present?

I should like to know from the Minister whether more favourable treatment could not be meted out to the Cape Peninsula. I quite appreciate the Minister’s argument that if he reduces the charges appreciably he will be asked to provide the telephones without money. The hon. member for Cape Town (Harbour) (Maj. G. B. van Zyl) has suggested that Cape Town and the Peninsula might be treated as one unit. We now have three or four different exchanges in the Peninsula — Claremont, Wynberg, Simonstown, and so on, which splits up the Peninsula, which naturally is one unit. The hardship is that if you live in one particular exchange area and want to telephone out of that area you have to pay not l½d. but 3d. There does not seem to be much justification for that. The probability is that if you are outside, the greatest part of your telephoning is into Cape Town. Therefore, you are penalized to that extent. I do not think it would be a reasonable thing to treat the whole Peninsula as one unit. I do not think that would entail an enormous increase of applications, but I think it is a concession that would be greatly appreciated by the inhabitants in the different exchange areas of the Peninsula.

After the question which the hon. member for Maritzburg (North) (Mr. Strachan) has put to the Minister, I must put another question, and that is whether he thinks his department is justified in wherever they can elbowing the poor unfortunate black man out of the services, and what is to become of the black man if he is not to be allowed to sell his labour in these services also? I would not have raised the matter if the hon. member for Martizburg (North) (Mr. Strachan) had not done so. I think it is a very serious matter when you get one of the members of the cross-benches urging this. Here we have a vote for telephone construction. To-morrow we will have votes for railways and other services, and I do not think we should allow it to go forth that the black man is to be elbowed out of these services without raising our strongest protest against such a policy.

I would like to ask the Minister whether he is aware of the fact that the Transvaal, Free State and Natal have an abundance of telephones, but the unfortunate Cape, and particularly in my part in the Southwest, they are extremely scarce. I would again appeal to the Minister, who has £600,000 to spend, that it would be appreciated if he would send a little round our way. I would draw attention to the exorbitant rates for telephones, particularly to farmers or party line holders, who are crying out for telephones. We do feel that the charges are exorbitant and that the matter requires attention.

In regard to the question by the hon. member for Stellenbosch (Mr. J. P. Louw) as to whether we would favour the deposit system, that is a matter I will go into, and see how far we can meet that request. It is, I admit, a little bit awkward to keep on paying month after month and it involves a good deal of book-keeping, but I can assure the hon. member that this £40,000 we are now asking you to vote, is not losses through people not paying their telephone charges. It would surprise the House to know how little is lost through people not paying.

You cut them off.

Yes, and quite right too. I made enquiries a few weeks ago at the exchange here and it will be of interest for members to know that out of £7,000 which had just been paid for the month’s telephone requirements, there was only an outstanding of some £12 not paid, and that would be in in the course of a day or two. The hon. member for South Peninsula (Sir Drummond Chaplin) has put up an extraordinary argument. He does not see why the whole Peninsula should not be brought into one telephone zone. When the hon. member gets in the train at Muizenberg and goes to Wynberg he has to pay a certain sum, but if he goes on to Cape Town he has to pay more. It is exactly the same with the telephones; the lines and connections have to be kept up. These telephone areas are divided into zones, roughly five miles in radius, and everybody in that zone gets the same treatment; but if they start telephoning beyond that zone they have to pay a higher rate. If he had put up a case for a larger zone I might consider it, but when he suggests that we should include a place 30 miles away one wonders where he would stop. It might interest the House to know that the whole of this £40,000 we are now voting is being used for farmers’ lines. Everything has been done to extend farmers’ lines, chiefly in the area represented by the last speaker. And this vote is my answer to what the hon. member for Witwatersberg (Lt.-Col. N. J. Pretorius) said this afternoon. He complained that we were spending money on the air service probably to the detriment of the country population. We have spent £130,000 on farm line development during the twelve months and the work was done so well and quickly that before the end of the year we found we had fulfilled our contract and built no less than 3,000 miles of farmers’ telephones—I said “We shall have to go on with next year’s programme. We cannot pay the men off. There is plenty of development to be done. Where are these men most urgently required?” The engineers put it to me that work was required in the Calvinia, Prieska and Namaqualand areas, in the Cape Peninsula and on the Rand. So we spent £40,000 extra on country telephones beyond what we intended when the estimates were passed last year. I hope members who have accused us of paying attention to other matters will be satisfied that we have paid in good measure. In reply to the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg (North) (Mr. Strachan) I may say that we have been employing white labour instead of natives on telephone construction work. It was an experiment we started after we took office. I have been getting monthly reports from all the five divisional engineers in the postal service regarding the employment of white labour on this construction work, and I am very pleased to say that each month shows an improvement both in regard to the amount of efficiency and work done and in regard to expense, which I believe in the long run is not going to be much greater. I am trying to get it down by more efficient methods, so that we shall get the same amount of work done by Europeans at from 6s. 6d. a day rising to 14s. for semi-skilled work—as when we employed native labour. The unskilled work done by the natives is being done by whites, who are gradually becoming skilled unskilled workers. The engineers report very favourably on this experiment. It was found at Port Elizabeth that a certain piece of work which it would take natives six days to do, at exactly half the pay, was done by white men in three and a half days. I am satisfied that if we continue with this employment of white labour we shall be able to get the same amount of work done in a better way and on a white man’s wage as compared with its being done by kaffirs. I am watching the position very closely and I am satisfied that the experiment is more than justifying itself. In reply to the hon. member for Worcester (Mr. Heatlie) I would say that a large amount of unemployment and distress was caused amongst the Europeans because of the way we were acting in past years. There was no opening for unskilled white labour until we took office unless a man was prepared to work at what the hon. member for Cape Town (Central) (Mr. Jagger) calls an economic wage.

But you do not do away with unemployment.

The money is being well spent. A good deal of it is being spent in his stores.

Where?

All parts of the country. White men are being paid wages with which they buy the hon. member’s goods.

I do not ask for that.

And it will prevent the European population from doing what they were doing— leaving our shores in greater numbers than they were coming in. To-day the tide has been turned.

When?

The latest reports from the Census Department show that for the first time for several years there are more people coming in than going out. That is only due to what we have done by opening avenues of employment for Europeans, so that they can have some hope, and feel there will be a future for their children who will find employment at a wage which will enable them to live as civilized people. I may tell the House that the number of Europeans employed on telephone construction when we took over was 479 and the latest return was 932. In this connection I wish to say that we are doing no injustice to natives, who were taken on as temporary employees and not permanently. Let me say this, there has not been one native dismissed to make way for a European. There was one at Port Elizabeth who had been eight or nine years in the department. He got his notice inadvertently without my knowledge. One of the members for Port Elizabeth wired to me about the matter, I made enquiries and found that this native had given good service, and I at once cancelled the notice for his dismissal.

I cannot understand the last statement of the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs. Just simply as a reference I find that the increase of £111,000 under the salaries head is made up of £60,000 for annual scale increments, £10,000—

On a point of order, the hon. member is dealing with the main Budget; he is quoting from the main Estimates.

That point is not now before us and the hon. member cannot discuss it.

Will the Minister deny that a large sum of money is being expended for Europeans in place of native employees who have been dismissed in the Department of Posts and Telegraphs? He cannot deny it.

The hon. member must confine himself to this Vote.

I put a plain question to the Minister. Will he stand up there and tell us that not a single native has been displaced by white labour, that not a single native has been dismissed in order to make room for Europeans? The people in Johannesburg will be Very much disappointed at the statement made by the Minister to-night. He says that there is a tremendous demand in Johannesburg for increased telephonic service. He stated also that he and the engineers looked round to see which places were more deserving or more entitled to have increased telephonic service, and he went out to Namaqualand, Calvinia and other places, and gave them £130,000 of extra lines for the farmers. This means that the farming community is benefitted to the detriment of the urban community. The Minister says that white labour has proved a paying proposition. Has he read the report of the Johannesburg Town Council where they employed white labourers and removed the coloured labourers, and then, afterwards, on the report of one of the tramway employees there, they had to remove the white men and reinstate the natives? He eulogized white labour as against native labour, and there we have an experiment on the tramways—

You are quite wrong.

I must point out to the hon. member that the tramways of Johannesburg is not the subject under discussion.

You are quite wrong; I am giving an illustration. I am showing, or attempting to show, that in another department in South Africa white labour was dearer.

I would like to point out that the Minister has not replied to the question I put to him.

I have already said that we are not in a position to introduce the system mentioned by the hon. member (Maj. G. B. van Zyl) in Cape Town, because we have not the plant and equipment to meet the demand that would arise. In regard to the people who have got telephones installed, I will consider that question and see what we can do in the matter, if the hon. member thinks it will be an advantage. The hon. member for Port Elizabeth (South) (Sir William Macintosh) seemed to discount it.

In reference to the increased employment of Europeans mentioned by the Minister, does he mean that he has kept all the natives on, when he says that not a single native has been dismissed? Another point I would like to raise is whether the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs is following out in his department the principle which the Minister of Railways and Harbours claims he carries out in his department in regard to civilized labour. Does he consider that only a European can be “civilized”? Are there any coloured persons in the number quoted by him?

Not at all. We are employing coloured workers as well as Europeans on this work, I mean coloured as distinct from native.

The Minister of Posts and Telegraphs has been giving us some very interesting figures in reference to the employment of white labour in laying these telephone lines in place of coloured labour. He apparently seems to be well satisfied and pleased with the result. Does he really and seriously come to this House and announce as a matter of congratulation that our white labour is able to beat what has been considered in the past native labour?

I would like to correct the statement in regard to white labour and black labour on Johannesburg tramways made by the hon. member for Von Brandis (Mr. Nathan). The chairman of the Department concerned was down here and we put the matter to him, and he said that the newspapers were absolutely wrong. The position is that relief labour was put on that work and the relief labour was replaced with white lads. It was not a question of replacing white labour with natives, as stated by the hon. member.

I cannot accept the statement of the hon. member opposite (Mr. Hay), because the papers stated distinctly and the chairman whom he refers to distinctly said that they had to remove these people and put them back on relief work.

I think the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs is to be congratulated on the advance he is making in the direction of opening up new avenues of employment for white labour. The experience is the experience of the Johannesburg municipality, where that same experiment has been tried, and with great success for many years in spite of the statement made by the hon. member for Yon Brandis (Mr. Nathan). I will say this, that the hon. member was present at the meeting when the correction was made by the chairman—

We cannot go into that now.

I want to ask about this loan to Vryburg Municipality. I understand this municipality is in a very unsatisfactory position.

Bankrupt.

I will not go quite so far as that, but I want to know what security there is for this advance. Then, I want to ask, what is the meaning of this £149,000 for the redemption of school loans to the Cape? Is this a present you are making to the Cape?

With regard to this advance to Vryburg, the amount was lent to them to enable the municipality to obtain a water supply. Hon. members may not know that some years ago the municipality embarked on a scheme for a water supply. They obtained some piping which proved unsatisfactory. Some litigation ensued, and they were under an order of the court to discard these pipes, and the company had to take them back. That would have meant that the whole township would have been without water supply altogether. The hon. member has stated they are in a very unsatisfactory position. That is so, they are paying a rate of 8d. in the pound, a higher rate than is being paid, I believe, in any other part of the country, but if they pay that rate they will be able to meet this loan. They were sued by the Standard Bank, and the bank has taken out execution, but under the old Cape Act they are only entitled to levy a certain annual rate. This is not the sort of assistance the Government would be anxious to give any municipality, but if the Government had not come to their assistance, the whole town would have been without water supply. That was not a position the Government could face with equanimity. Through the arrangements made by the Government, they will be able to have their water supply, and by paying this rate their liability to the Government will be met. As regards the other matter, the contribution is made in terms of an Act of Parliament, in which the Central Government undertook liability for certain school loans. Unfortunately, when the main estimates were passed, the amount could not be included because they had not told us what they required, and so it had to be included here. It is a contribution under the terms of the Act, and I am now asking the House to provide the money, which the House agreed was our liability.

Were they for school deficits?

No, nothing to do with the school board.

I understand from the hon. Minister that the £14,000 has been given to the municipality of Vryburg, but he has not made clear what security the municipality has given for the loan. I would also like to ask the hon. Minister why the usual practice has not been followed of going to the Provincial authorities to get help. The Provincial authorities usually give these loans to Municipalities, Divisional Councils, etc. I cannot recollect for years that a municipality has gone to the central Government for a loan, and I cannot see why it has occurred in this case. Some time ago, if I mistake not, there was a case in the Supreme Court and this showed a debt of £46,000 on the municipality of Vryburg, and that this community was in great financial difficulty, and I should therefore like to know from the hon. Minister what security the State has for that £14,000, and why they did not go in the first place to the Provincial authorities, and why, if those authorities refused, they did not go to the public money market to borrow money as municipalities usually do.

I have already told the hon. member for Cape Town (Central) (Mr. Jagger) that we have the security that a town council usually gives, viz., a rate on the fixed property in the village. They levy there 8d. in the £, and this will enable them to fulfil their obligations. It is true that the obligations are very high. They owe a lot to the Standard Bank and this bank went to execution. Much can, however, not be done and the bank also must wait for the collection of taxes. The hon. member for Caledon (Mr. Krige) asks further why the town council did not go in the usual way to the provincial administration. Simply because the provincial authorities had no money for it. He asks further why they did not try to get the money in the open market. He has acknowledged that the obligations of the town council are high, and they would not be able to raise the money as in ordinary business transactions. The Government was forced to step in, because the town or village was without a water supply. As I have already said, the town council will be able to meet its obligations and we shall be able to get our money when the tax of 8d. in the £ is paid.

All that I can say is that I am not opposed to the money being given. I only say that it is a bad principle to allow municipalities to incur enormous debts and then to be helped by the Government through the back door. Vryburg, with a debt of £46,000, should have stewed for a bit in its own juice. The Government has now only got the rate as security, but has not the community of Vryburg got town lands where on the taxes can go to the Government? I know of several municipalities in the Cape Province that borrow money and as a first mortgage they give their commonage, which can be sold for payment of the debt. I understand from the hon. Minister that the State has no security beyond the rate, but I know what it means for small country municipalities to pay 8d. in the £. Such a municipality is on its last legs, and I doubt if the security of the Government is worth a penny.

I have already said that I do not defend the transaction as an ordinary business matter. The hon. member asks why we did not take a bond as security. He has, however, said himself that the debt of the town council is £46,000, and then he wants us to take a bond. The provincial authorities were approached for these loans in the usual way, but the Government was in the position that it had either to advance the money or allow the town to be without water. If the hon. member was in my position he would not have taken the responsibility on his shoulders of acting otherwise, because if the company concerned had said that it was going to take away the pipes, then there would have been a famine, and the Government felt obliged to help the people.

We have already advanced £300,000 for the relief of distress, and now we are asked to vote an additional £200,000. I would like to know how the system is working A committee had to be appointed in each drought-stricken area which could recommend to the Land Bank the advancing of money.

Under the Act passed last year the working of the relief system is entrusted to the Agricultural Department. Then the funds are put at the disposal of the Land Bank, which is entrusted with the general distribution and administration of the money. Various committees are formed by the Agricultural Department; the committees receive applications and consider them, and the applications are then submitted to the Land Bank, which determines them. I informed the House last year that although we were then making increased provision for the granting of relief, so many requests had come in from drought-stricken districts that I was afraid that the money then voted would prove totally inadequate. That has proved to be the case. According to the last return from the Land Bank, applications for loans from committees numbered 8,927 for a total of £1,335,000, but it was impossible to grant all the applications, and consequently some had to be refused. The latest returns I have here. I can give the information to the House. In the Cape applications received by the committee, totalled 1,571; they refused 562. They granted 807, for a total amount of £117,000.

What is the average?

The hon. gentleman will be able to calculate; about £150 I think. In the Free State the applications were 1,751, they refused 657, the number granted was 1,059, for a total amount of £71,815. That is about £70 each, on the average. In the Transvaal, the number of applications received was 5,513, number refused, 1,449, number granted 3,925. For a total amount of £231,916. The total sum granted was £420,000. A lot of these applications are still being dealt with and before the month is out the full amount of £500,000 will probably be exhausted. The greater portion of the amount was paid out in the western districts of the Transvaal, where the drought was worst, but luckily for the country these payments have been made and this assistance was given during a time when we had nice rains. These people have all made a good start and I am quite sure this assistance will be of immense benefit to the country. In many cases trek oxen and seed were given and they have all started ploughing and in many cases I am informed as a result of the crops they will reap they will probably repay a considerable portion of the sum granted to them. In all the circumstances, I think, the country will find that this admittedly large amount which Parliament has been asked to vote has been well spent.

I presume that some small proportion of this vote has been spent in the drought stricken areas of the Eastern Province. I think it is my duty to bring to the notice of the Government the conditions prevailing there at the present time, and they are daily becoming worse. We had an extraordinary drought there last season, and when I tell the House that the losses in cattle alone in the Ciskeian territory amounted to 58,000 head, the House will realize the necessity of something being done there. I feel it is absolutely necessary for the Government to start relief works in these parts and that can be done in the direction of roads to the forest stations and such like work. I trust the Government will take this matter in hand at once and seek to relieve the distress there.

reported that the committee had agreed to the Estimates of Additional Expenditure from Revenue and Loan Funds, without amendment.

I move, as an unopposed motion—

seconded.

Agreed to.

Clause as amended put and agreed to.

Bill, as amended, adopted and read a third time.

Perhaps with regard to the hon. member for Kimberley (Sir Ernest Oppenheimer) my words were not quite explicit. I think I made use of the words during the first portion of my speech that an hon. member opposite—and I naturally alluded to the hon. member for Kimberley—had been materially instrumental in driving a wedge into the syndicate, or that he was a material participant. I think I was somewhat incorrectly reported there, because, if I remember rightly, I said that he had been instrumental. I did not mean to convey to the House—and if that impression was conveyed I wish to correct it at once—that he was a voluntary participant in driving the wedge into the syndicate. The position is this, that the Government forced the position, and the hon. member, representing the financial interests that he does, was compelled by the force of circumstances, to make an offer for the 21 per cent. of South-West diamonds, an offer which was ultimately accepted, and, in making that offer, he naturally could only do so by severing his connection with the syndicate, or by not taking part in the ultimate offer made by the syndicate. Now the syndicate had attempted in their offer of November last to draw a distinction against the Premier Company. They first made an offer of 10 per cent less than the old price against the Premier Company. Afterwards they reduced that proposed reduction of 10 per cent. to 5 per cent, and later still, as their last word, they said “All right, we will ignore the proposed 10 per cent reduction, we will ignore the proposed 5 per cent. reduction, we will go on the old basis]” As I have pointed out, the ultimate contract obtained from the syndicate with the Premier and with De Beers, was materially more favourable than the old contract and the old price. Then I pointed out during the previous portion of my speech that the Government was not convinced that a case had been made out for an international conference in regard to the limitation of output of South African diamonds and of the world’s diamonds, that we hold the big stones in the Union, and by that fact we can control the market, that we need not fear the competition of the rest of the world. Now to give the House an idea, of the figures, this is the approximate figure for the four big producers for 12 months, we calculate a basis of about £8,000,000. Alluvial production is about £2,000,000, outside mines in the Union like Koffiefontein, and others, £500,000. Outside producers in South-West £200,000, and foreign producers about £2,000,000, making the total of about £12,700,000. I want to point out that the five years’ contract which was; entered into by the interests represented by the hon. member for Kimberley (Sir Ernest Oppenheimer) was made with the concurrence of the South-West Company. I gave a figure of £224,000, calculated for the year, by which I have said that the producers were better off, apart from the fact that for South-West we have secured; a contract for five years which in itself is a material improvement on the old position. I had better show how that amount is made up. In respect of South-West, there is an increase of £32,000 for the first six months, and if there is a repetition of the first six months’ experience during the second six months, it will make it £64,000 for the year. As regards the Union producers, the three big ones, Jagersfontein has secured about similar terms as the Premier and De Beers. There is an increase for the first six months of £80,000, and on the same basis for the second six months this would become £160,000 for the year. That makes £224,000. This assumes the basis of trade for the second six months will be equal to that of the first six months, and I think that assumption is justified. I want to point out with reference to the contract for South-West that first of all the Consolidated Diamonds of South-West Africa were prepared to accept the offer of the syndicate of November last year, which was an offer of three and a half millions for purchases from the four big ones—tie Beers, the Premier, Jagersfontein and South-West, except that Consolidated Diamonds of South-West suggested a figure of three and three-quarter millions. I quote from a letter of the 24th November, 1924, from the secretary of the Consolidated Company to the Administrator, to the following effect: “I am directed by my directors to say that in their opinion the syndicate should be pressed to take three and three-quarter millions from the four conference producers for the first half of the year 1925. If this 21 per cent. is definitely allocated to the company, they are agreeable to accept the conditions set out in the letter of November 19th, 1924. “That was the letter of the syndicate making the offer, so you see the ultimate contract is a material advance of that offer, and on what the consolidated company indicated they would be satisfied with in their letter of November, 1924. I want to point out that it is really absurd that; the Government should sit still when we have in South-West Africa an interest of 66 per cent. in its production of diamonds, and when we have in the Union a 60 per cent. interest in the premier mine. The Government is very materially and directly interested in the matter. In the South-West, under the German law which we have, luckily for us, retained all through, we are responsible for the working costs to the extent of 70 per cent. and we share in the profits to the extent of 66 per cent. Of course, that is a very material source of income to the South-West Administration. I also wish to point out that the profits of the syndicate are made and are spent abroad. The investments of the syndicate are made abroad, and I think it is clear that if we can encourage competition in our own country, and if profits can be made by handling the business in our own country, we have this benefit—we have the investment and a good portion of the profits here. I have pointed out that the Bill is purely an enabling one which does not direct the Government to carry out all these things. The position is simply this, that in the absence of a satisfactory voluntary agreement among the producers themselves, it has become absolutely imperative that the State should step in by legislation, and I do not know whether legislation was not contemplated by our predecessors. If I look at the minutes of the conference that was held under the chairmanship of my predecessor in April last, I find that he made use of these words: “I want suggestions from this conference. Do not forget when the Select Committee was sitting and I had to fight your case to prevent control being put into the new Bill, and I may tell you an amendment was moved to say that Government should immediately institute an enquiry with a view to establishing control and you will see it was a control of sales and not of production.” I must infer from these remarks, and I understand there is also some reference to it in the report of the Select Committee, that it was felt at that time that the State might have to step in. We were faced with this situation, and it became more and more evident that it was now necessary to come forward with legislation of this kind. Mention has been made of diamond cutting, and that the object is to facilitate the establishment of a diamond-cutting industry in the Union. I am not concerned to enquire to what extent this Bill is going to do that. I am dealing with the amendment of the diamond-cutting Act in another Bill, and we shall be able to discuss the matter then, but in introducing this Bill. I have not had my eyes on the diamond-cutting industry at all. Whatever its incidental effects may be the object of the Bill has been as I have stated. We shall use the powers when we think fit, and when circumstances demand that they should be used. They will be used either wholly or partially as circumstances may require. I will deal shortly with the Bill. The first principle fixed by the Bill is that the Governor-General may determine the volume of business from time to time. He may also determine quotas, I need not enlarge upon this because I have practically explained that by what I have stated previously. He may determine minimum prices. The obvious reason for that is that when you have fixed your quotas and your volume of business and have not made arrangements for minimum prices, your market can be spoilt and flooded unless there is such a provision. The next is the establishment of a Diamond Board. The next is the powers of the Board and the only important provision under the powers of the Board is sub-section (b) The Board may demand and receive diamonds from any producers named by the Board for sale on their behalf. That compels any producer called upon by the Board to hand over the diamonds to the Board who will dispose of them for the benefit of the producer, the board being allowed a reasonable remuneration. I would point out that as regards the volume of business and the quotas and the prices all this has in the past been arranged by voluntary agreement, but we have it that these voluntary agreements have proved unsatisfactory and that it has been most difficult in practice to fix agreements for a reasonable period of time ensuring the trade for the future, but this Bill goes no further than what has been done in the past. The principle has been established in the past of fixing the volume of business the quotas and minimum prices: I said previously that I could quite conceive of certain producers refuting in certain circumstances, no matter how good the offers might be, to sell to certain would-be producers, and it may be that circumstances may arise under which the Government would find itself justified to apply the powers under (b) dealing with the constitution of the board and the powers of the board. The next thing of importance is section 9 of the Bill, which deals with the capital of the board. Of course, in times of crisis, that capital might amount to a considerable sum. We know that in good times the syndicate has really required very little cash to handle diamonds because there was such a ready sale; the turnover was so quick that the amount of capital required was comparatively insignificant. But we appreciate that in critical times the necessary capital may become a very large one— anything from five to six or seven million pounds. In ordinary times a comparatively small amount of capital would suffice. Of course, the capital required by this board will be in accordance with the amount of business done by the board. If it is on a small scale only, the capital required will be very small, but it will be a very good thing to have one more competitor in the field, and it all depends on how purchasers from elsewhere adapt themselves as regards this important product of the Union.

To whom will the board sell?

To the people to whom the syndicate sells now.

They will have to give credit.

I have already admitted that the board will require some capital. The producers will have to be paid punctually, and that implies that a considerable amount of capital will be necessary. There is a provision under section 13 for a joint fund and in section 14 for a reserve fund. I need not dwell upon those. There is in section 16 an important provision that the Governor-General may at any time after the appointment of the board declare it unlawful for any producer to sell or export diamonds save through the board. Naturally, if we want to control the diamond trade export will have to be controlled, and that power is taken, and should be taken as a logical consequence of the other principles of the Bill. In clause 17 provision is made that any contract for the sale of diamonds entered into after the Bill obtains the force of law which makes provision for the sale of diamonds beyond December 31 of this year, shall be invalid as regards any portion of that contract applying after January 1 of next year. The reason for that is obvious. Because otherwise a contract may be entered into in advance to stultify some of the important objects of the Bill. That is a perfectly fair provision. I do not think that any such contract has been entered into in the Union; so in any case this provision will not affect any actual existing contract. Nevertheless, it is reasonable that this precaution should be taken. The last provision of the Bill is that the alluvial diggings are excluded. They are excluded for obvious reasons. You cannot possibly, for instance, apply these provisions in regard to the alluvial diggings, where the producers concerned carry on a hand-to-mouth business and diamonds are handed over for cash in the most Informal manner. Contracts are concluded in the same way, and it is utterly impracticable to apply a Bill like this to the alluvial diggings, the whole production from which is only about £2,000,000. I have much pleasure in moving the second reading of this Bill.

When the hon. Minister first introduced this Bill, I may say this most Socialistic measure, he spoke in such a bitter tone and with such hostility that it left me with a feeling that the Minister was not impartial. I am pleased to say that he has been a little more piano to-night, and he took pains to describe the negotiations between the syndicate and the producers which ended in a big deal. There is nothing new in that description which he gave; it is simply what is generally the case when a buyer and seller are negotiating over a big transaction and, in regard to the additional price that the syndicate paid for the Premier diamonds, there was an interval of two or three months, and it might have been, perhaps, that the market had improved and warranted the syndicate in paying these prices.

On a point of order, is the hon. member for Beaconsfield (Sir David Harris) in order in addressing this House in terms of Rule 122, in view of the fact that he is a member of the syndicate and has a pecuniary interest in this matter?

Will the hon. member state his point of order?

The point of order is Rule 122, which says—

The member for Beaconsfield (Sir David Harris) is interested with Solly Joel, one of the members of the Diamond Syndicate, who are particularly interested in this measure, and I submit that the hon. member for Beaconsfield has a direct pecuniary interest in this measure. I ask whether Sir David Harris, as a member of the Diamond Buying Syndicate, is not precluded from taking part in the discussion owing to direct pecuniary interest in the Bill before the House?

I would like to point out that I am not voting at present. I am only talking on the measure.

As far as that is concerned the rule reads—

I do not, however, think that the hon. member for Beaconsfield (Sir David Harris) is precluded from taking part in this debate. The Bill is certainly a matter of public policy, and in sub-section (3) it will be found that this standing order shall not apply to any vote or discussion on á matter involving a question of public policy. I consider that this Bill is a matter which involves a question of public policy, and the hon. member is entitled to proceed.

The hon. Minister said just now that in good times the Syndicate inquired very little capital to carry on their business. I may tell this House that the minimum capital employed by the Syndicate in the very best time was £3,000,000 and the maximum employed in bad times was £7,000,000. I will come to that later on. It appears that the Minister is very anxious to protect the producer against the machinations of this terrible Syndicate. The shareholders do not appreciate the Minister’s kindness because, since the publication of the contents of this Bill, the share capital in these mining companies has fallen, I may fairly say, by at least three-quarters of a million, so that proves that the shareholders have more confidence in the Board of Directors than in the Board of Control as proposed under this Bill to conduct the affairs of the diamond mining companies.

Is there not a way of depressing the share capital by selling largely?

I do not know; I am not a speculator in the share market. You might ask the hon. member for Pretoria (West) (Mr. Hay), who knows much more about it than I do. As I said, the shareholders have much more confidence in the Board of Directors as they know, as the whole world knows, that when a Government interferes with any industry, it has a paralysing effect, hence the fall in the price of shares. The Minister knows very little about the diamond industry; in fact I may say he knows nothing at all, because he said the diamonds produced outside the Union and South-West do not compete with the diamonds produced in the Union and South-West. He says we produce larger diamonds, and therefore these outside nations produce only small ones. That is not correct, because Angola produces diamonds of a very fair size, and the quality compares favourably with those produced within the Union. The bulk of the diamonds produced within the Union are small. It is true the De Beers Company in one of its mines produces a larger percentage of large diamonds than any other mine, but that is only a small percentage of the whole. The Minister said the other night that we have got the outside world to deal with and must go slowly and carefully, but no one can compete with the Union and South-West, and therefore it was no use trying to frighten the Government with the rest of the world. The Minister of Mines reminds me of an infant on a sinking ship. Through his ignorance he is unconcerned, not realizing the impending danger. I say the diamonds produced outside the Union and South-West do compete with us. The world takes about £12,000,000 worth of diamonds per annum. About £9,500,000 worth are produced in the Union and £2,500,000 worth outside. The £2,500,000 worth produced outside the Union compete with those produced in the Union. If you were to eliminate the 2½ million worth we could supply the world with the whole 12 millions per annum. To show the effect of this increased outside production on the De Beers Company alone, I may say that before the increase of diamonds took place, the De Beers Company employed 4,000 white men and 18,000 blacks. To-day in consequence of this outside production they employ only about 1,800 whites and 5,200 natives.

And improvements in machinery.